Michael A. Gardiner
Iwashi and zuke sushi
The search for the sushi bar with the freshest fish is an endless one. It’s also, perhaps surprisingly, a counterproductive one. The best sushi isn’t always the freshest. In fact, it never is. Many of us just didn’t know. One great place to learn that is Himitsu (1030-G Torrey Pines Road) in La Jolla.
Take, for example, Himitsu’s salmon nigiri. It’s not fresh off a boat, and it wouldn’t be nearly as good if it were. Chef Mitsu Aihara, a Sushi Ota protégé, cures the salmon in western-style white wine (not sake) before serving it. It’s a technique Mitsu-san learned from Yukito Ota, the goal of which is to refine some of the salmon’s flavors and results in a piece of fish better suited for sushi.
On the most recent of three trips to Himitsu, Mitsu-san served zuke sushi—tuna marinated for a few hours in soy—that was an unabashed improvement on what it might have been without that bath. On the same trip, my request for kohada (gizzard shad) was met with a groan and a sheepish smile. Mitsu wanted to but couldn’t comply: the cure was not complete. It’s a technique that goes back to sushi’s Tokyo origins as fast food-by-the-bay. But cures, originally intended to lengthen the shelf life of the fish at a time when refrigeration wasn’t possible, are still used for a different reason: to make the fish taste better.
The best way to go about a meal at Himitsu is omakase, a Japanese word that translates literally as “I’ll leave it up to you” but plays out like a tasting menu in which each dish is a pleasant surprise and often combines sashimi (raw fish without rice), sushi and cooked dishes.
Mitsu-san started our omakase dinner with a sashimi platter that prominently featured some of that aforementioned salmon with a pile of uni and some edible gold flakes for a touch that added more visual appeal than culinary. Uni and salmon were on opposite sides of another dish: a duo of salmon and ikura (salmon roe) on one side, hamachi (yellowtail) and uni on the other. But the best dish of the meal featured a piece of sinfully delicious seared A5 wagyu beef topped with sliced scallion greens and served over kale with fried squid. A dash of soy and vinegar managed to tie the entire dish together and highlighted the wagyu’s richness without overpowering its balance.
Himitsu strives to be in the top ranks of San Diego’s high-end sushi places along with Ota, Tadokoro and Shirahama. It’s close. Himitsu’s very good, but not without inconsistencies. On one trip the zuke sushi seemed to want more time in the soy marinade. The knife cuts were not always consistent. These are hyper-technical points, yes. But when the name of the game is simple elegance, not complexity—and when the goal is the top—the margin for error is thin.
Still, Himitsu is the sushi bar La Jolla has wanted but never had. It is beautiful, it is unabashedly high-end, and it is the right sushi bar in the right place at the right time.