2.34 Terried Sake House
Posted on September 30, 2008
Filed Under Best of the Best, Japanese | Leave a Comment
Terried Sake House falls into the hole-in-the-wall category. It’s a great little Japanese Izakaya on Santa Monica close to Federal. An Izakaya, of course, is a restaurant that serves beer and sake and also the food that goes with it. The place is small and a bit dingy, but the food more than makes up for it. It’s also fairly inexpensive for an Izakaya, so we got to order a ton of stuff. Alright, less talk, more pictures of food. Here we go.
We start off with one of their signature dishes. Everyone gets this when they visit. This is the tofu steak with egg served on a sizzling plate topped off with some bonito flakes. Very simple, wholesome and homey, you can taste the natural flavors of tofu and it’s accented with the bonito and egg. $5. Highly recommended.
Baby squid steak. I’m guessing anything on a sizzling plate is called a steak here, ’cause baby squids simply don’t resemble a steak! This is delicious, though, great flavor from the squid and made complete with the green onions and the powdered seaweed. Highly recommended.
We ordered the salmon skin roll and the spicy tuna roll, which were both very good, nothing short of rolls you’d find at a proper sushi place.
Avocado tempura. This was quite a find. I loved the creamy avocado and the crunchy texture of the tempura batter, it comes together surprisingly well. Give it a try.
We tried a couple chicken yakitori items as well. Here’s a momo and some wings. Both had very good smokey flavor and pretty inexpensive at $1.80 a pop.
By this time I was very happy and wanted to try some of their sake. I went for an unfiltered Nigori and loved it. Sweet, fruity and a little creamy, this was very pleasing.
We’re close to wrapping things up so we went for some carbs. Here’s a grilled salmon rice ball and also a smelt egg rice ball. The smelt egg had a very interesting flavor when grilled, almost perfume-like. The salmon had a much more typical salmon flavor and was also very good. Definitely try the smelt egg.
To finish it all off, we got a spicy tuna tempura. Spicy tuna (like the hand roll) wrapped in Perilla (Shiso leaves) and then deep fried. The leaves added a great herb flavor to things and you don’t taste the spiciness of the tuna until you’re 2 or 3 bites in. Very good.
The place gets crowded quickly, we got there at 6 on a weeknight and didn’t have to wait, but by 7 there was a good line outside. For good reason, of course. The food’s tasty, authentic, wholesome and inexpensive. Our total bill came out to about $46, less tip and we were pretty full. Service is decent and polite. I’d love to come back and try more stuff.
Terried Sake House
11617 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 477-9423