Health

Yes, fast-food soft serve is still the best soft serve. These are the top 7 brands, ranked We’re rapidly approaching the official end of summer, but there’s nothing saying you have to roll back your summertime habits. Keep going to the beach. Keep up the picnicking and outdoor movie-ing. And keep enjoying one of the … Read more

(Photo Illustration by Diana Ramirez/De Los; Photos by Katrina Frederick/For The Times)

How Los Angeles became the epicenter of sushi in America The history of sushi in Los Angeles spans decades, a sweeping chronicle of entrepreneurship and a sprawling city’s culinary evolution. Though the first mention of sushi in this paper goes back to 1899, L.A.’s love of raw fish with rice took hold in Little Tokyo … Read more

What makes L.A.’s sushi scene so great? I found answers in Tokyo At a tiny sushi counter in this boundless capital’s southwest suburbs, nine of us sat silent and alert waiting for Koji Kimura to finish readying his lunchtime service. We whispered our drink orders to the restaurant’s lone server while listening to indistinct sounds … Read more

Morihiro resturant in Atwater Village, California. Mori’s choice for a few selections of nigiri from the omakase on his ceramics. Wooden plate is the a “sushi six” plate from the four course option. The long rectangle plate is all (veggies acorn squash, tamago, carrot, fried tofu, house made pickles), the red bowl is house made … Read more

The key to making easy sushi at home? Throw a hand roll party All you need for a hand roll party at home is a big bowl of sushi rice, a tall stack of nori (dried sheets of seaweed) and any fillings and condiments you want. Fresh, crunchy vegetables are excellent with sushi rice, and … Read more

The ultimate California roll lives on at this SGV fish market. (Fights at the sushi case prove it.) Not all imitation crab is created the same. Just ask Kenzo Yamada. Also known as Yama-san to locals, he opened Yama Seafood market in San Gabriel in 1984 and started making California rolls 20 years ago. By … Read more

Nearly a decade after the opening of KazuNori, hand roll bars are embedded in the culinary fabric of L.A. (Illustration by ZUCK / For The Times)

Supermarket sushi you’ll actually want to eat I tend to grade supermarket sushi on a curve. Confined in plastic boxes under fluorescent lights in frigid deli cases, most packaged sushi takes all of the elements essential to good sushi and chucks them out the window in favor of convenience. Oftentimes it can be too cold, … Read more

Yuko Shimizu / For The Times 1 Los Angeles is a sushi city — home to countless restaurants that treat raw fish with the sort of reverence usually reserved for religious rites. But this wasn’t always the case. It took an unlikely alliance to make it happen. It started in Tokyo in 1965, with a … Read more