The Brief

Yuzu, matcha, shiso — you’ve likely had them at a Japanese restaurant. But how about in a beer?

A handful of independent breweries here in Los Angeles are pushing creative boundaries, blending European beer-making methods with Japanese ingredients, resulting in some truly remarkable creations.

Like a tart matcha wheat beer crafted by a medical researcher with a Ph.D. Or a Belgian-style tripel brewed with sake yeast in a Covina business park. It all fits right in with the region's emphasis on embracing new and cutting-edge beer styles.

It's notable that the experimentation with Japanese ingredients is happening here, not Japan. That's because the Japanese craft beer scene, while burgeoning, is still small compared with its U.S. counterpart. (It’s only been in existence for about 30 years, after a change in local microbrewing laws). So it's still got a fair way to go to catch up.

Here are some of the SoCal breweries marching to their own, Japanese-inspired drums.

n/Soto and Cellador Ales

Alex Ourieff, owner of Cellador Ales in Torrance, specializes in farmhouse ales, a brewing method traditionally used by European farmers.

Today, that style means using ingredients sourced from local farmers, fermented inside wine barrels with a blend of yeasts and bacteria to create distinct flavors. Ourieff’s beers tend to be more sour, but they also have floral and fruit-forward notes, which add depth and make each batch always enjoyable.

After forming a relationship with n/soto, a casual upscale Japanese restaurant located in West Adams, Ourieff and n/soto general manager Mark Nechols decided to collaborate on a beer.

The vision was to create something that would complement the restaurant’s izakaya-style menu, a Japanese version of bar bites, which features everything from grilled skewers to crispy tempura.

n/soto x Cellador Tart Wheat Ale only available at n/soto in West Adams.

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Courtesy n/soto

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A shiso leaf grown at Yasutomi Farms in Pico Rivera, used for the n/Soto x Cellador Tart Wheat Ale collaboration.

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Courtesy Cellador Ales

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The beer, n/soto x Cellador Tart Wheat Ale, uses one of Cellador Ales' Belgian-style witbiers (a wheat beer) as its foundation, known for its creamy mouthfeel and golden appearance due to its unfiltered brewing process.

It's then combined with yuzu, the Asian citrus fruit; sansho, a green peppercorn known for its subtle numbing heat; shiso, an aromatic herb that’s part of the mint family, locally grown at Yasutomi Farms in Pico Rivera; and ginger, sourced from Her Produce in Fresno.

Finally, the beer is naturally carbonated with local honey.

Nechols says he wanted to challenge the stereotype that traditional Japanese beers are pale, crisp, and easy to drink, like those offered by Sapporo, Kirin Ichiban, and Asahi. (Those are not sold at n/soto by the way.)

Alex Ourieff, owner of Cellador Brewery in Torrance, where he creates his barrel tart farmhouse ales.

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Courtesy Cellador Brewery

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“ I think we made a beer that has good drinkability using only local products, and that’s along the lines of what I was thinking with this collaboration,” Nichols said.

When I tried the beer recently, it was tart and slightly funky, underscored by subtle herbaceous flavors. The added ingredients complemented the light, wheat-based style of beer that I already enjoy, and its subtlety made sense in a Japanese restaurant.

The beer is currently available only at the West Adams restaurant, with plans to keep it in rotation for the foreseeable future.

Ikasu brewing

Located inside the Native Son tap room in downtown Los Angeles, you can find Ikasu Brewing, and owner Masahiro Kitano, who goes by Masa. Kitano has the look of a mad scientist, with messy hair and wild eyes behind his glasses, perhaps because that's not too far from the truth.

After earning his Ph.D. in medical science from Osaka University in Japan, he came to Los Angeles to begin a post-doc fellowship, initially at Cal Tech and later at USC, studying cancer biology.

Masahiro Kitano, the owner of Ikasu Brewing, who goes by Masa, holds up a taster of one of his recent craft beer creations.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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During that time, a fellow post-doc introduced him to the concept of home brewing. He started experimenting and eventually joined the local homebrew organization SoCal Cerveceros, where he began entering his creations in contests — and winning.

That’s when he got the idea to start Ikasu, a name that’s slang for something that’s cool and in the moment, aimed at creating one-of-a-kind beers that showcased Japanese ingredients.

“There are so many unique Japanese ingredients that never show up in beer, and I wanted to experiment with that,” Kitano said.

For his first, now flagship beer, called LArigato (‘arigato’ means thank you in Japanese), he wanted to produce a rice lager, the most common type of beer found in Japanese brewing, which uses rice instead of malt barley.

For his creation, he bought Japanese rice grown in California and ground it into a rice powder to create what he felt was a fuller-bodied flavor and softer mouth feel.

He also made a variety of other malt-based beers, like Goma Me (‘goma’ means sesame in Japanese), a dark, porter-style beer made with black sesame seeds. It combines roasted flavors with a hint of umami, similar to the taste of black sesame seed ice cream.

“ Usually, umami is an off flavor in beer, but if it's intentional, it gives a different story,” Kitano said.

Those roasted umami flavors really came through when I tried it, complementing the creamy texture of this beer style, making it a great alternative for when you get sick of drinking Guinness.

His most experimental beer is the Matcha Tart, inspired by the sour German tart wheat beer known as a gose, which is renowned for its unique blend of salty, sour and refreshing flavors.

Kitano himself describes the addition of matcha as a “super weird combination,” and it certainly was that.

I could taste the notes of matcha’s earthy flavors, along with a savory umami undertone and just a hint of tartness. I’m personally not a big matcha drinker (I prefer coffee), so it’s not something I would order regularly. Still, I appreciated the lengths Kitano is willing to go to create something completely original.

Finally, I also sampled the Yuzuko Show, a saison, a Belgian-style farmhouse ale. Kitano makes it with a fermented mixture of chili pepper, yuzu peels and salt. I could definitely taste the black pepper and citrus; I suggested to him it could be a a perfect base for a michelada.

Kitano now has six beers on rotation at Native Son, as well as kegs at a few select locations around L.A.

Nova Brewing Company

Way east of Los Angeles, in Covina, is Nova Brewing Company, a small three-person operation. It’s led by James Jin, who is the head brewer and co-owns the brewery with his wife, Emiko.

Jin, who is Korean-American, grew up in Southern California and attended UCLA, where he studied Japanese. After graduating, he participated in an exchange program in Japan and traveled back several times, teaching English. He then moved to Thailand for four years before running out of money and returning home.

He took a job at Mutual Trading, a Japanese importing business, where he met Emiko, who is Japanese, while they were both taking a sake sommelier course.

Growing up, Jin said he’d always had a strong interest in both Japanese culture and craft beer. In 2019, he completed two apprenticeships at prominent breweries in Japan, Inaba Brewery and Kiuchi Brewery, which produce both craft beer and sake. There, Jin learned the ins and outs of brewing both.

James Jin and his wife, Emiko, owners of Nova Brewing Company.

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Courtesy Nova Brewing Company

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“I’m serious about sake, but I love being playful with beer,” Jin said.

Later that year, he and Emiko took over an older brewery space in Covina and began making their own beverages. They now have seven craft beers and five sakes, with Emiko overseeing the financials.

Jin focuses on creating a product that’s as natural as possible, even down to the water, which goes through a two-part filtration system before it gets added to his beer and sake.

While many craft beers today are heavy on hops, Jin prefers to go in a different direction, playing with the level of malt for a smoother flavor profile and using hops sparingly to include only a hint of bitterness.

The current lineup of the craft beers at Nova Brewing Company.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Jin’s two signature beers, part of his Ginjo 7 series, are two blonde ales, both brewed with sake yeast. The white label blonde is light and crisp due to the addition of steamed rice, while the blue label contains wheat and oats, giving it a creamier mouthfeel. Both had floral notes from the sake and went down easily.

Another beer, the Oolong Island, features roasted oolong and yellow peach, providing a perfect amount of sweetness balanced with a slight nutty note. The name itself is a play on the Long Island iced tea cocktail, as an homage to its combination of flavors.

While Jin is happily at home in his Covina location, he eventually hopes to move the business closer to Los Angeles and build a large facility devoted to craft beer and sake. For now, he’s renovating his current space for those willing to make the trip to taste his unique creations.

You can also get his beers at a couple of different outlets.

For decades, the Los Angeles Metro Board, which runs the countywide public transit system that sees more than 1 million daily riders, has operated without a member of the public who regularly rides trains and buses among its members.

Now, calls to change that are growing. On Thursday, the Metro Board is set to vote on what the future make-up of the governing body should look like, and there are several options on the table:

• Allow politicians who select Metro Board appointees the flexibility to appoint transit riders or subject matter experts to the Metro Board — a recommendation from Metro staff. 
• Reserve two seats for transit riders and expand the board from 13 to 14 voting members — a proposal from L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and three of her colleagues on the Metro Board. This option would not allow for the so-called flexible appointments recommended by agency staff. 
• Create an additional Metro Board seat guaranteed to be held by a transit rider — a proposal from L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn.

Sound complicated? It is. Let’s break it down:

The background

Currently, there are 13 voting members of the Metro Board: the five L.A. County Supervisors, the mayor of L.A. and her three appointees, and four regional representatives from across the county chosen by a selection committee.

There’s no requirement that they have transit expertise or public ridership experience.

At the beginning of this year, the Metro Board formed a committee that convened monthly to discuss how the Metro Board could be reformatted in light of Measure G. That’s the measure L.A. County voters passed in 2024, which expands the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members by 2032 and adds an elected countywide executive.

The make-up of the Metro Board is codified in the state’s public utilities code, so any proposed changes approved on Thursday will need another vote by legislators in Sacramento before they go into effect.

Metro staff’s recommendation and Bass’ competing motion

Based on feedback from committee deliberations, public input and a review of peer agencies across the country, Metro officials in June proposed maintaining the size and geographic split of the Board. 

Under that proposal, they also recommended expanding the pool of people who could serve on the Metro Board to include riders and experts in relevant subjects, like engineering or finance. If ultimately approved, these members could be chosen by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, the mayor of L.A. or the city selection committee.

In its recommendation, Metro officials notably shied away from adding a seat to the board, saying an extra person would impose “administrative and financial burdens on the agency.”

According to the rules for the Board, members are paid $150 per day they attend “to the business” of Metro up to $600 per month.

Metro’s media relations office did not answer a request for more information on what additional administrative and financial burdens the addition of a board member would impose on the agency.

A competing motion introduced by Bass would not allow the L.A. County Board of Supervisors or the committee that selects the four regional representatives to appoint a transit rider or subject matter expert.

Instead, it would designate one of the mayor’s four seats for a for a transit advocate or rider, and it would add a 14th voting member of the board who would also be a rider.

Currently, all five of the L.A. County Supervisors are guaranteed a spot on the L.A. Metro Board.

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Courtesy L.A. County Board of Supervisors

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A guaranteed seat for a transit rider versus an optional seat

Hahn’s motion does not directly conflict with staff’s recommendation, and similar to Bass’ motion, would add a transit rider to the Metro Board.

Hahn said a dedicated seat for a transit rider would be more powerful than an appointed one.

“I worry that if [the rider] was just an appointed position by an elected official … [the rider] would feel loyalty to the appointing elected official as opposed to loyalty to their fellow riders,” she said in an interview with LAist.

She said it’s clear that there’s a community desire for a guaranteed rider seat on the Board.

During a public outreach period between February and May, Metro gathered input from 1,300 people. The clearest and most consistent piece of feedback was that the public wants to see a “formal rider voice on the Metro Board,” according to a Metro report. 

While the staff recommendation to expand who can sit on the Metro Board would theoretically allow for the appointment of a transit rider, if not several transit riders, some officials have questioned whether elected officials would voluntarily cede political power to a member of the public if that option moves forward.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath characterized a future under Metro staff’s recommendation as a “political game of chicken.”

“ Who's going to take the responsibility and give up the power that they hold?” Horvath told LAist.

Why don’t the Metro Board members … just ride transit themselves? 

Michael Schneider, the head of the influential transportation advocacy group Streets for All, warned that reserving a seat for a transit rider on the Metro Board could backfire.

He said adding a seat for a rider, or any interest group, risks creating a situation where Metro Board members defer leadership to the representative.

“The rider experience should be top of mind for all board members,” Schneider said. “If there’s a specific seat for a rider, then board members may decide to not pay as much attention to the rider experience.”

Schneider argues Metro Board members should all be mandated to use Metro at least once a week. It’s a metric that could be tracked using TAP cards, he suggested.

“It’s hard to improve a system that you don’t have experience with,” Schneider said. “Experience is not sitting in a chair in a boardroom. It’s on a train or on a bus or using Metro bike share.”

A large part of the L.A. Metro Board's responsibility is overseeing L.A. County's public transit system.

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David McNew

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Getty Images North America

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Transit rider appointment just one part of broader conversation 

The debate over a dedicated transit rider on the Metro Board is just one of several thorny questions, some politically charged, that officials are weighing as they decide what the Metro Board should look like.

Here’s what else will likely be discussed on the topic on Thursday:

• How many seats should the city of L.A. have on Metro’s Board? Under state law, if the city’s population falls below 35% of L.A. County’s entire population, then one of the city’s  four seats would be transferred to the other 87 cities. Some, including Horvath and John Fasana, a former mayor of Duarte and previously a longtime Metro Board member, have urged that the threshold be increased to 43.75%. 
• Should the county executive have a dedicated seat on the Metro Board? With the number of county-level seats remaining at five despite an upcoming L.A. County Board of Supervisors expansion to nine seats, some have argued that parts of the county could be underrepresented without additional representation.

Flies, rodents and other pests have been a persistent problem in Boyle Heights and nearby communities as millions of pounds of food rot in a nearby burned-out warehouse. It’s gotten bad enough that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is asking for action from the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

In a letter sent Tuesday to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, Bass said she’s “concerned with County DPH’s pace in addressing this disaster” and the risks it posed to health and quality of life.

“Possibly the worst manifestation of these risks is the severe infestation of flies in Boyle Heights and neighboring communities,” Bass wrote.

LAist has asked the Department of Public Health for comment and will update this article when they respond.

The back-and-forth between jurisdictions

Bass wrote that the city of L.A., which does not have its own health department, is largely dependent on L.A. County for control of potentially disease-carrying vectors. The city has said elsewhere that its Sanitation Department did set about 250 rat traps in surrounding areas.

Bass’ letter says the county took its first steps to hold warehouse operator Lineage accountable for a fly infestation on July 17, ordering the company to remove flies and mosquitoes from the property.

“Although I appreciate that County DPH has taken this first step, the County’s report only directs Lineage to eliminate flies from Lineage’s own property,” Bass’ letter to Ferrer states.

Bass urged the county to compel Lineage to address pests at neighboring properties “with aggressive measures to eliminate the flies and any other vectors.”

As for L.A. County’s Department of Public Health, a spokesperson told LAist on July 17 that it had itself directed the city and Lineage to address the pest situation.

“Los Angeles County Department of Public Health requested that both Lineage Logistics and the City of Los Angeles develop and implement a vector/insect control plan,” the statement reads.

Lineage’s part

According to Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights on the L.A. City Council and met with Lineage representatives on Monday, an inspector contracted by the company confirmed that the rotting food at the warehouse is serving as a breeding ground for flies. The infestation won’t go away without addressing the root cause, Jurado reported the contractor as saying.

“Removing waste, adding odor-control equipment, and conducting a pest inspection are important,” Jurado said in a statement. “But residents are asking a more fundamental question: Are conditions actually improving? They deserve evidence, timelines and accountability — not just a list of activities.”

Lineage has not yet presented its pest control plan to the public.

A ticking clock

The first day of instruction for L.A. Unified schools is Aug. 12, three days before the city’s current deadline to clear the warehouse — a deadline Lineage does not appear to be on track to meet.

That’s led many teachers and parents to raise the alarm about smells and pests that may very well still be around when school starts. An LAUSD spokesperson told Boyle Heights Beat that it is prepared to temporarily relocate nearby schools, as they did with summer programs during the warehouse fire.

Lineage meets deadline at last minute

Meanwhile, Lineage also faced a deadline of Tuesday to present a plan to air quality officials on how to address smells of spoiled food, which have been reported from miles away. A South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesperson said that the agency received a response from Lineage at 5 p.m. and is evaluating it.

L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.

The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.

Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.

“ We haven’t gotten anything,” said Erum Shahnawaz, LAHSA’s chief internal auditor, referring to the lack of response from LAHSA management at a meeting of the agency’s audit committee on Monday.

“That’s the only thing that's holding us from issuing the final report,” Shahnawaz said of the underspending audit.

That audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous, external audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.

Shahnawaz flagged management’s delays to the LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa, Szlasa said. He chairs the commission’s audit committee, and has repeatedly called out LAHSA executives’ delays in providing information about taxpayer spending over the past year.

“ I've been trying to intervene and use whatever I can to try to help provide support,” said Szlasa as he described his attempts to get the auditor the answers needed to complete the report.

Szlasa was appointed to the commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

 “It shouldn't take us two months to receive a…management response to an internal audit,” Szlasa said at Monday’s meeting. He said the industry standard for internal audits is eight or nine weeks from start to finish. That compares to the two years — and counting — for LAHSA’s federal underspend audit.

“We haven't had a single internal audit completed here in the last couple of years, which is nuts,” Szlasa added. He called for internal audits to happen much more frequently.

Long delays to LAHSA audits also are not new. In November 2024, the county issued a widely-seen audit that included findings that LAHSA was failing to complete internal audits.

Half of LAHSA’s governing commission is appointed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and half appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass is also the only elected official on the commission. She served on the audit committee for several months last fall. Records show she was absent for all of the meetings during that time.

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said management’s responses to the audit on underspending haven’t been provided yet because LAHSA leadership did not have clearly defined roles for who is supposed to coordinate responses to internal audits.

“ We need to work on clarifying that role internally,” Lim said.

 “The last two months have been probably some of the most stress-filled two months that we've had at LAHSA,” said Paul Rubenstein, chief of staff to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neil, pointing to mass layoffs.

Szlasa said there’s not that much in the audit for management to respond to.

“It's like, six pages or less,” he said.

Szlasa said  another option is to “just say we've asked management for responses and we're awaiting management response. We can publish the results.”

In response, Shahnawaz said that if management doesn't have an updated timeline for a response, then she’ll go ahead and issue the report without the response.

Once they floated that idea, Lim committed to providing the responses by next Tuesday.

LAHSA’s leadership has downsized the internal audit team — dropping from a staff of three to just one in the agency’s proposed budget up for approval Friday.

Delays in getting access to financial records

The delayed responses from management are not the only thing that’s been slowing down audits, Szlasa said at the meeting.

LAHSA policy, approved by its governing commission, says internal auditors are “ authorized to access all organizational records, personnel, and systems necessary for conducting audits,” he said.

But the auditor has faced challenges in actually getting that access, Szlasa said — including delays in being allowed to view LAHSA’s databases that show contracts and financial payments.

 ”We finally were granted access, but it wasn't, it wasn't easy, it wasn't immediate. It was slow,” Szlasa said.

Many failed outside audits

The delays on the internal audit come even after LAHSA failed multiple external audits in recent years, which have found the agency — overseen by city and county elected officials — has neglected to properly track billions of dollars in spending.

Largely in response to earlier audits, L.A. County supervisors pulled funding from LAHSA and are having the county instead oversee it directly. L.A.’s mayor and City Council have continued to have LAHSA manage the city’s homeless spending while the council delays plans to start studying a possible plan to transition away city tax dollars.

Signatures under scrutiny

LAHSA is also in the midst of a different internal audit — expected to finish in late August or early September — examining whether top officials followed requirements when signing contracts and letting others sign. It was launched in the wake of LAist reporting that found LAHSA’s then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s signature finalized a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer.

LAist also discovered Adams Kellum’s signature, as LAHSA’s CEO at the time, finalized a quarter-million-dollar contract between LAHSA and a longtime service provider she led up until two months earlier.

That contract was signed so soon after she left the service provider — St. Joseph Center — that the contract paperwork still listed her as one of St. Joseph Center’s points of contact and authorized signers.

She is currently under a state ethics investigation into whether her actions were an illegal conflict of interest.

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Courtesy Bengara

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.