Little Tokyo: Hama Sushi

I always seem to crave sushi and I’ve been meaning to try Hama Sushi for a while now. It’s generally agreed Hama Sushi along with Komasa and Sushi Gen are some of the top sushi restaurants in Little Tokyo.

We arrived early and took seats at the bar. Actually the whole restaurant is a sushi bar. There’s only one table near the front. Our sushi chef was an affable older gentleman who was so adorable when giggling and checking off our order. It’s like eating with your grandfather. I almost couldn’t keep up with the speed he was handing out the nigiri. After we turned in our order, out came the tuna, sweet shrimp and yellowtail very quickly. Ah, the fish is so fresh! I opted to have the sweet shrimp heads with miso soup.

Next we had some delicious salmon.

My friend wanted the uni (sea urchin) while I wanted the salmon roe. The chef gives you one of each nigiri when you put in one order and I would have happily traded my friend for the other salmon roe since I know she probably wanted the other uni. But I’m glad I got to taste both.

I never remember which eel I like more when presented with a list of sea eel and plain ol’ eel. As it turns out sea eel is anagi which I don’t like as much as unagi (eel). It’s still pretty good though!

We had some fairly “mundane” things but when the fish is fresh, it’s hardly boring. The albacore was some nice fish and I enjoyed the crunchy soft shell crab roll.

Yes, it’s spicy tuna roll time. I liked their spicy tuna so much, I got a hand roll.

Yeah, so good.

For our second round, our chef started us on salmon belly. We had noticed the people next to us were only eating salmon and salmon belly. We loved the salmon so we got some more.

I loved the firm kanpachi.

Ah, here’s our beloved eel! This unagi was crispy on the edges and didn’t have too much sauce- just the way I like it.

I wanted to see how their spicy yellowtail was after enjoying the spicy tuna so much. Well, I liked the spicy tuna more which is odd considering I generally like yellowtail but not a big fan of just tuna.

I liked Hama more than Komasa. Although Komasa seemed to have more variety and more specialties, Hama came through with great fresh sushi. I still want to go back to R23, Go Sushi 55 and Toshi Sushi, but for an experience, I’ll save up for omakase at Sushi Gen.

Hama Sushi

347 E 2nd St
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(213) 680-3454