During this year of our plague, if you head for Myrtle Avenue in the heart of Old Town Monrovia, you’ll find an abundance of destinations for some affable, much-needed, outdoor dining: Basin 141, Sena on Myrtle, Bella Sera Trattoria, Ikonicks Burgers & Brew, The Diplomat and more. All fine and tasty options, with a good view of locals cautiously emerging from their long COVID-19 hibernation.
But what really appealed to my hungry heart were a pair of unexpected Asian options, found just off the main drag, convenient to a large municipal parking lot, on tastily named Lime Avenue. Unexpected…but also very welcome.
If you’ve eaten your way across Japan — and goodness knows, that should be high on your bucket list! — then you’ve been to restaurants like Sushi Nakata before, perhaps even many times. It’s not just that the quality of the sushi and sashimi is exceptional — though it is, and we’ve come to expect nothing less, in SoCal, where sushi is somewhere between a cult, and a full-blown religion. It’s that the place is so darned…tiny.
When, it’s fully open, there are six seats at the sushi bar, just six, and several small tables. Six small tables have been moved for outdoor dining; the sushi bar, obviously can’t move. That’s the whole restaurant — aside from the chef behind the sushi bar, and the small, functional kitchen behind a curtain.
Japan is filled with micro-restaurants like this; in a land where space is at a premium, and vegetable gardens stretch right up to train lines. Restaurants in Japan are found in subway stations, and on the upper floors of office buildings. Some of the best sushi I ate in Tokyo was at an eight-seater in a hotel basement.
Sushi Nakata isn’t in a basement; it sits on one of Old Town Monrovia’s citrusy side streets, with an equally tiny noodle shop next door called Mooncat Ramen, that I’m told isn’t connected with Nakata, but apparently offers a small menu of sushi rolls from Nakata. For those who can’t make up their minds, this approaches the best of both worlds. But for me, the decision was easy — I’ll take sushi any time. If it’s our religion, I worship it as often as I can. I’m an Ahi Acolyte.
The menu at Sushi Nakata is familiar, accessible with only a small hint of chefly exotica under the heading of “Specialty Rolls” — just five of them, which is way below the average, in a part of the world where some of the more outré sushi bars have dozens, and in one notable case, more than 100 eccentric rolls.
In this case, the unique rolls run to the Lime Roll, which is not just named for the street, but also for the slice of lime that sits atop the roll, underneath which crab, spicy tuna and albacore happily nestle. The Orange Roll is shrimp tempura wrapped in salmon.
The Nakata Roll is a California roll with eel and avocado on top — a very fine combination. There’s a salmon truffle roll as well, and a spicy yellowtail roll, which hardly sounds like an outlier at all. A roll has to be made with cream cheese to really start going madcap. And, bless ’em, none of these are. (I think cream cheese in a sushi roll is like peanut butter on a rib eye — just so wrong!)
Otherwise, the sushi at Nakata is all about the quality — which I’ll contend is as tasty as any I’ve found in town. There’s usually a clue about quality in the days the sushi bar is open. In this case, it’s Tuesday through Sunday. The fish markets are, of course, closed on Sunday. If sushi is served on a Monday, it may be several days old. Some of the best sushi bars observe Monday as an internationally respected holiday — Fishless Monday.
Aside from that, freshness is, of course, a tad subjective — except when something really isn’t fresh. But in this case, the albacore is a fine color, a bit shiny, tasting like the fish was swimming around till around an hour ago. The salmon is a reddish pink, a lovely color to contemplate, best seen in the carpaccio or the sashimi, but fine atop a roll as well. The uni, the Hokkaido scallops, the yellowtail, the sea bream — everything I tasted was just so good, so right, so…fresh.
There are appetizers too, once again, nothing especially out in left field. Edamame of course. Miso soup with or without clams. Seaweed salad and cucumber salad. Spicy tuna over crispy rice. Shishito peppers, some hot, some not — impossible to tell from the outside.
And if someone in your party needs a hot dish there are three — there, I assume, because someone always wants one, even in a sushi bar. There’s chicken teriyaki, salmon teriyaki. And pasta flavored with uni. Pasta with sea urchin. It’s wonderful notion, a delicious dish…and sort of quirky. I guess you could also make it a Moveable Feast, and have a course at Mooncat Ramen next door. But as ever, sushi satisfies. Fish and rice, that’s all it is. And it’s so close to perfect.
Sushi Nakata
- Rating: 3 stars
- Address: 108 E. Lime Ave., Monrovia
- Information: 626-256-3379, https://sushinakatamonrovia.business.site
- Cuisine: Japanese
- When: Lunch and dinner, Tuesday through Sunday
- Details: Beer and sake; no reservations
- Atmosphere: Tiny sushi bar, with an even smaller ramen shop next door, making for a tasty one-two punch for those in the mood for an evening in Japan, complete with some of the best sushi for miles around.
- Prices: About $25 per person
- Suggested dishes: 15 Appetizers ($3-$7.50), 14 “Daily” Sushi ($6.50-$16), 14 “Daily” Sashimi ($6.50-$40), 11 Cut Rolls & Hand Rolls ($6.50-$9), 5 Specialty Rolls ($14-$16), 3 Entrees ($12.95-$19), Omakase ($75 and up)
- Cards: MC, V
Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.