Angelina, who?

Gjelina, Gjelina, Gjelina.

Loved everything about this place down to their bathroom fixtures. (How cool is their wheel-faucet fixture?! I sooo want one.) The moment le cub and I stepped in, I gasped, as the decor was pitch perfect. Industrial, yet warm due to the exposed brick and mixture of wood with metal. And ooh... the chandelier... i wanted their "bulby" chandelier. But enough about the decor. On with the food...

My man and I stopped on by on early saturday afternoon hoping to grab brunch, but we missed that menu by ten minutes. No worries, we were down for their afternoon menu of oysters, salads and pizzas. Our wait was 20 minutes.

We were seated at a cute little table at the back, outside. Apparently this is the "lounge area." A really cute space that could only exist in sunny Southern California. There were heat lamps, installed above our table, but they weren't turned on while we were there. No need.

Service was polite but "meh" (we were constantly trying to make eye-contact to get orders placed, to add on to our original order, to get the check, but the staff rarely noticed us), but the food was fantastic. Fresh and unfussy. Beautiful to look at! (We'd ordered the mushroom truffle oil pizza, the hen of the woods mushroom pizza, 1/2 dozen kumamoto oysters, 1/2 dozen umami oysters, the trout avocado grapefruit salad, and the banana chocolate bread pudding with caramel.) OMG, omg, omg.

Rustic and flavorful. Fresh, local ingredients. Our tummies smiled over and over.

We're heading back for the brunch and dinner menus for sure.

Gjelina
1429 Abbot Kinney Blvd
Venice, CA 90291
(310) 450-1429

Trust Me

Very good fish, but not the best "evah"...

Le cub and I came here on a Wednesday night with my man. Neither of us had ever been to Sushi Nozawa, and neither of us had read Yelp reviews our lil' adventure. That said we were a tad confused when we were guided towards the sushi counter - at which, apparently, one has "no choice" and is told to "trust me" (by the sushi chef, nozawa-san) via the assortment of framed artwork behind his counter.

The ambience at Sushi Nozawa leaves much to be desired. Flourescent lighting combined with ghetto red vinyl chairs. Meh. No music plays in the background, and gosh, very little conversation takes place. (I whispered to le cub the entire time.) Bit sterile?! But ambience isn't what matters to us foodies. We wanted to taste the fish. Gimme.

We ordered the omakase as we were both ravenous. The tuna sashimi in ponzu sauce was overly sauced in my opinion, but the fish was definitely fresh. Intimidated by Nozawa's presence (we were seated smack center, right under his nose), I constantly making "mmm!" sounds :) After the tuna sashimi, Nozawa served us toro sushi. The fish was fantastic, but I was a tad turned-off by the crumbly rice (which apparently is Nozawa-san's signature). Then came the blue crab hand roll, which I was REALLY not a fan of - as the crab flavors were totally overpowered by the rice. Which isn't to suggest that Nozawa isn't generous with his fish. His servings are hearty. But the rice... I couldn't even leave the rice on the plate as le cub and I were eating at the sushi counter right before him. We didn't want to piss off the famed sushi nazi...

Albacore sushi, yellow tail sushi, and a toro hand roll followed. And after our last roll, we were asked if we wanted uni. (Uni is, apparently check-point one. If you answer "yes" to uni, he serves you three more items - including the uni.) A question to which we both exclaimed, "YES!"

The uni was FAB. But once again, his strange rice took away from my serving of fish. sweet scallops followed. I was bursting at the seams at this point - due to the rice - so le cub kindly helped eat my second piece.

Our meal came to a strange end with raw oysters. Now we're both huge fans of oysters, but the strange thing was, these Nozawa oysters had been removed from their shell and placed in dim-sum tea cups filled with some soy sauce-based concoction. We spooned the oysters into our mouths and both of us were somewhat turned off by the textures of these particular oysters (really rubbery). but because we were seated right under his nose, we gulped the cupful down and went, "mmm!"

Great place for sushi, but a tad overrated...

Sushi Nozawa
11288 Ventura Boulevard
Suite C
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 508-7017