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Los Angeles is a city of head-spinning juxtapositions—nature versus city, glamour versus grit—and one of its finest examples is the high-low culinary collision of the strip-mall sushi joint. Hidden amongst the shabby, low-slung commercial buildings that serve as an omnipresent backdrop to the city’s clogged thoroughfares are fish-forward gems serving some of the freshest, most innovative, and just plain beloved nigiri and sashimi.
Perhaps the most famous of these is Sushi Park, on the second floor of a ho-hum mini-mall overlooking a buzzy stretch of Sunset Boulevard. It operates on a first-come, first-served policy, is omakase style (i.e., chef’s choice), is pricey but not astronomical (around $400 per person at last count), and is charmingly low-key in service and humble in decor. Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Kendall Jenner, and Angelina Jolie are just some of the A-listers who dine there. It’s so infamous that its drab facade has had cameos in a Bottega Veneta ad campaign and editorials in fashion magazines.
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A group of gastronomes including Bad Bunny and Kendall Jenner seen leaving LA’s Sushi Park in 2023.
It wasn’t, however, the first. The progenitor of the genre was the stern Chef Kazunori Nozawa, a curt master known for serving simply prepared, critically-adored fare from a nondescript corner mall in Studio City, where hungry diners would line up out front in the parking lot; it later inspired others lauded spots to join him—Katsuya, Shin, Asanebo—and the stretch of Ventura Boulevard where it operated became known as Sushi Row. Nozawa closed his doors in 2012, but his legacy lives on through his popular casual chains Sugarfish and KazuNori. Downtown’s Sushi Gen and Arcadia’s Sushi Kisen, are just some of the city’s many easy-to-miss (and yet not-to-be-missed) examples.
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Diners waiting outside of the late, great L.A. strip mall sushi spot Sushi Nozawa.
My personal favorite is Noshi, in a humble wood building on Beverly Boulevard, where the sushi is hardly gourmet, but that’s the point. The service is brusque yet chummy, the food is comforting (is the spicy tuna roll heavy on the mayonnaise? Yes, and it’s delicious), and the price is reasonable. They only recently started accepting credit cards.
“Locals know that the city’s more authentic experiences take place in hidden corners or hole-in-the-wall spots.”
All of this speaks to the idiosyncrasies of the LA dining scene, where just down the street from starlets forking over obscene sums to pick at mediocre salads, you’ll find voracious foodies happily lining up outside parked trucks awaiting cheap tacos that will bring them something close to gastronomic transcendence. It’s easy to assume that the height of epicurean sophistication in Los Angeles is prime table at the Chateau Marmont or a paparazzi’d entrance at Craig’s, but locals know that the city’s more authentic experiences take place in hidden corners or hole-in-the-wall spots that offer Michelin star sustenance in unpretentious surroundings. It gives celebrities the chance to cosplay as civilians for a meal, and for civilians to feel like stars. So next time you’re stuck in traffic on LaBrea or Wilshire, keep your eyes peeled for a line snaking outside dingy storefront in a rundown mini-mall—your next great meal may be waiting for you.
Berlinger is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Business of Fashion and others. He’s probably wasting time on Twitter right now