Japon Bistro

I ordered three items here: Tatsuta-age, Crab Cake, and Sushi Lunch.



The Tatsuta-age and Crab Cake were slightly over fried. Tatsuta-age is basically boneless fried chicken. Even though they tasted good, but the hard and crispy crust from the deep fryer dropped its tastiness by a point.



Crab Cake was okay. They came in to small-sized balls, again deep fried with the hardy crusts. The flavor from the crust overcame the flavor of the crab. Not okay.



Sushi Lunch was good. It came with several varieties: tamago, salmon, octopi, tuna, and they all tasted fresh. If you are ever going to visit this restaurant, this is one item worth getting.

Checked this place out as part of dineLA week. I went here for lunch with coworkers and left semi-satisfied. The lunch menu was $15 for 2 appetizers and an entree. I had the grilled pork belly and the spicy salmon roll, and the sushi lunch (variety of sushi pieces and a spicy tuna roll) as my courses. It also came with a miso mushroom soup. for the price of the meal and everything we got, i thought it was worth it.



- the miso soup was not as flavorful as expected, not that much miso flavor and it looked as if the mushrooms were added in after, and not cooked along with the soup.

- the grilled pork belly was really good. soy-sauce flavor and lightly char-coaled.

- spicy salmon rolls were just ok. the rice was falling apart, and there wasn't enough spice.

- sushi dish (variety of sushi) was pretty good. 7 sushi pieces, and 4-piece spicy tuna roll. i could taste just enough of the flavors for each fish.



overall my experience was just alright. it seemed they were having issues in the kitchen with food coming out, and our sushi plate took a long time to get out. our waitress was very apologetic though. on the upside, they did give us a 4-piece CA roll to start with. parking is limited to street parking, i didn't look for a lot.

My co-workers and I were looking to try dineLA in Pasadena area and we decided to try this place since their dineLA lunch was only $15 per person.



I picked tatsuta age (chicken) and pork belly as my first choice and they are not bad. These appetizers are normally $2.5 each. It also came with miso soup but miso soup was not good; I thought dashi was missing.



For main course, I tried sushi lunch (normally $13 for lunch by itself) and it was actually good, not the best sushi in LA but for the price, it was not bad at all.



However, the service was very slow. But the server apologized us and gave us free rolls so that was nice.