Bites and Bolts

Picture this: Late Sunday morning, three food bloggers race to Monterey Park from their respective residences in anticipation of serious ramen grubbing. Navigating traffic, locating parking, and braving sluggish 30 year old elevators, they arrive at their glorious destination: the newly opened Daikokuya. It was closed. Doh!

Luckily, other than Sup Bookstore(sup, dude?), a little restaurant by the name of Shin-Sen-Gumi was open for business. It was unanimously agreed that we would gorge ourselves therein.

Seeing a bunch of hooligans with fistfuls of cameras, the host wisely chose to hide us from plain view at a semi-private curtained table. In the privacy of our own secluded area we took our sweet time ordering as we unleashed our inner food nerds documenting every inch of menu by DSLR and salivating profusely. 

 

 

First dish out was the tako wasabi, a delightful little splooge of octopus extremities thoroughly smothered by wasabi flavor and decorated with thin slices of green onions. The octopus was a bit too chopped and a bit too flavored to be thoroughly enjoyable.

 

 

A little green salad was ordered to help with fiber, mostly green leaf with a seriously refreshing light oil and acidic vinegar dressing.

 

 

After noshing on salad, we dug into the fleshy pink slabs of seared washu beef. Striped with fatty white lines each petite filet was delicately dipped in ponzu on its final chopstick constrained journey to the depths of our stomachs.  

 

 

More good stuff started pouring in shortly thereafter starting with pork wrapped asparagus. Highly recommended, the asparagus was crunchy and green wrapped with super juicy thinly sliced pork.

 

From one meat product to another, we dug into the slippery peach skewered sausages. Like little Japanese hot dogs, they paired perfectly with spicy brown mustard and ketchup.

 

 

The chicken breast skewers came next. The meat was fairly tender and moist, each inch long piece topped artfully with a tiny chunk of ume and julienned shiso. The chicken breast with wasabi was somewhat unremarkable in comparison.

 

 

The chicken cartilage yakitori was a slightly chewy option, lightly salted and just a tad crispy with the solid cartilage contrasting the tender meat.

 

 

Normally, I like my quail eggs raw, but I made an exception for the hard boiled trio wrapped in bacon. Nothing remarkable here, just some small eggs snuggled in thick salty bacon. Pictured behind the eggs, the chicken tail, a daily special, was like a smaller chewier version of the cartilage almost like cartilage nuggets.

 

 

Upon Keizo’s suggestion, we tried the meatballs, and then we tried some more. Partially charred chocolate outers gave way to soft moist meat inside. May I have another?

 

 

Another typical yakitori failure, the shishito defied my past experiences arriving in bright green color with an oily sheen. So this is what a properly cooked pepper tastes like! I never knew.

 

On our second round of yakitori, we agreed to try liver. I’ll eat liver, I’m just not a huge fan of the boiled rubbery bitter tasting slices that usually float about in my noodles. SSG’s liver was none of the sort! A few plump succulent pieces of very rare meat slid right off the stick and into my thereafter surprised mouth. I would have it again in a heartbeat.

 

 

I made a case for trying the hiyayakko being homemade and it was a refreshing palate cleanser with bonito flakes and green onion. Silky soft and delicious!

 

 

The pork wrapped enoki got our curiosity going, so we ordered it to find out how it was prepared. The mushrooms were cut into small bundles tucked inside a roll of juicy pork, which proved to be rather bland with an inside stringy fibrous texture.

 

 

Finishing up our mid-day meal was braised pork belly or buta no kakuni as I was so properly schooled by Keizo. This was my first time trying kakuni and it reminded me of pot roast in that it was somewhat tender(a little on the dry side) covered with an addictingly sweet sauce. I may have to try this at home, now that I found a recipe.

 

 

To be honest, I’ve been steering clear of yakitori and izakaya joints lately because too often I’m out $35-50 on a bunch of cute but mostly unsatisfying dishes. However, this lunch changed my mind. The restaurant was clean and bright and I didn’t leave smelling of charcoal! Plus, the service was prompt and on demand with convenient table buzzers. I would venture to say that I enjoyed it a great deal more than the crowded Gardena location and hope to return again to try their shabu-shabu.

I originally heard of Shin Sen Gumi on Yelp, however after two Japanese friends mentioned it within the same week, I felt driven to try it.

We went on a Saturday night at about 7pm-prime California dinner time. We were politely told to add our names to the list outside the door. We gladly obliged, and spent the next hour and a half shivering in the ocean air as we patiently waited our turn. Finally, our name was called and we were ushered into the small restaurant to the bar.

The bar is surrounded by refrigerated glass displays full of raw meat for grilling. The chef, a skinny older Japanese man crouches over the charcoal grill in the center of the bar, flipping about 50 skewers. Occasionally, he tosses seasoning on them. He fans the charcoal with a simple stick fan tucked away conveniently on his backside under his belt. Every so often customers will order beer and the staff will join them, drinking a glass in one gulp as they shout cheers throughout the establishment.

Yakitori is an experience much like teppanyaki for instance. It’s interesting to be a participant in this loud culinary show. The experience is part of the overall product offered, not purely the food. The food was all tasty, although Japanese food can be a bit bland-of no fault to themselves of course. It’s their style.

We tried a number of things from both the yakitori and regular menu: bacon wrapped quail eggs, ebi, flank steak, chicken breast with wasabi, meatballs, chicken wings, squid and asparagus, and cheese and fish cake dumplings. Being later in the evening, they had run out of a few popular items on the grill menu and the regular menu. As a result, we weren’t able to try everything we would have liked to.

As we wrapped up our $50 check, we couldn’t help feeling a little like hitting up a pho spot on the way home to fill up our stomachs. Overall, we enjoyed ourselves. Although the wait was far too long we were glad we roughed it out to try SSG our first time. In the future, I would plan to go earlier as I feel that it’s not worth waiting that long for yakitori. However, I hope to return again in the future as it is a great experience made even better by the company of friends. Maybe next time we’ll buy the cook a beer!