Feel like everyone is going to Japan? Fight the FOMO at these L.A. restaurants

Remember the summer of Iceland a few years back? It seemed like everyone had their flight trackers trained to Reykjavík and my social media feeds were flooded with images of the Blue Lagoon and puffin. After this season of “The White Lotus,” people flocked to the turquoise waters of Sicily. Now that Japan is open for visitors again, everyone I know just got back, is there now or is planning to leave soon. I need to save up a few more (a lot more) pennies before I make it back to Tokyo, but until then, I can indulge in some excellent Japanese food around town. It will minimize the sting while I scroll through everyone else’s travel photos, just a little.

Tantan ramen from Japonica

Asking me to choose a favorite bowl of ramen in Los Angeles is like telling me to pick a favorite godchild. It’s not that I love them all equally (just kidding, I do). But the answer will inevitably depend on my mood, and whether or not I left my Tide pen in another bag. When I wish to be consumed by spice and flavor, to slurp noodles with abandon and leave with dots of red broth on my shirt, there’s Japonica. The location in Redondo Beach has been around for two decades, but the newer one, open since July 22, requires a shorter trek that takes me by LAX, where I can imagine I’m heading for a flight to Tokyo.

Inspired by Chinese dandanmian, tantan ramen incorporates spicy ground pork and a broth boosted with sesame. Owner Taka Sada’s recipe was inspired by the bowls of tantan ramen he ate growing up in Osaka, Japan. He starts with a chicken and pork broth base, then layers in Japanese white miso; a Chinese tobanjan spicy miso made from fermented soybeans, chiles and broad beans; and a sweet Chinese miso. He also adds sesame paste, crushed black sesame seeds and roasted white sesame seeds. Each bowl gets a heap of spicy ground miso pork that’s been saturated and cooked with Chinese cooking wine and the soup’s three varieties of miso, turning it a deep red.

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“The most important thing is the spicy miso pork; that’s the key to tantan ramen,” he said.

Even without the pork, the umami of the broth is all-encompassing, in the sesame, the miso and the slow burn from the tobanjan. It’s like an excellent bowl of dandanmian drowned in a milky, sweet and spicy, sesame-intensive broth.

Sada uses fat, wavy Sun noodles for their chew and bounce. The thickness and the loose accordion pleats give the broth and the stray bits of pork something to cling to. They also make for excellent slurping, almost guaranteeing some splatter on your shirt. Remember the Tide pen.

Tongue two ways and saba kobujime from Kinjiro

An order of cured saba from Kinjiro in Little Tokyo.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

Kinjiro reminds me of the tiny izakayas I fell in love with in Japan. Places where I enjoyed plate after plate of delicate raw fish, skewers of smoke-kissed gyutan and many, many cups of cold sake. On a recent visit to Kinjiro, I was lucky that my dining companions shared my affinity for “fishy fish” and tongue, resulting in tongue two ways: simply grilled and sliced with yuzu negi and cooked to near capitulation in a rich stew alongside tendon. And there were multiple orders of saba kobujime. The mackerel was assertive with that familiar marine sweetness that registers as soon as it hits your tongue. While most mackerel I’ve tried can be tight and on the firmer side, even more so after curing, the slices at Kinjiro had a loose, buttery quality that seemed to melt. We were so taken by the saba, we finished the first plate and immediately ordered another. There was more sake too.

Onigiri from Rice & Nori

A selection of onigiri from Rice & Nori in South Pasadena.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

Onigiri was my preferred I-need-a-snack-on-my-walk-to-my-next-meal snack in Tokyo. I roamed the city eating the soy sauce tuna and mayo onigiri from Lawson and countless triangles of rice filled with tart umeboshi from every available source. Throughout the trip, my pockets overflowed with plastic wrap. (Tokyo is one of the cleanest cities in the world, with an alarming lack of public trash cans.)

There’s plenty of onigiri at various Japanese markets in Los Angeles, but I’m partial to the rice balls at Rice & Nori in South Pasadena, the 4-month-old second location of the Little Tokyo restaurant that specializes in onigiri and hand rolls. Shaped like plump triangles, the bottoms are swaddled in sleeves of seaweed, the sides flecked with nori and sesame seeds and the tops crowned with a spoonful of your desired filling.

The rice is loosely packed around the filling, cooked properly and never clumping. The chefs behind the counter are generous with the fillings, which for the most part skew traditional, save for a few exceptions: chicken teriyaki, sweet bacon and avocado or sukiyaki. The two I order without fail are the umeboshi and the salmon yuzu miso. The salmon is baked and flaked, enveloped in a creamy citrus miso dressing. The ratio of salmon to rice is about 50/50.

The umeboshi is just the way I like it, nearly unbearably tart, its flavor permeating the surrounding rice.

The restaurant also has a small selection of packaged Japanese snacks and sweets. Not nearly enough to mimic a full convenience store, but there are crunchy seaweed snacks and spicy crackers. And there are trash cans for when you’re finished.