Highland Park: Japanese Small Plates at RBTA
Japanese fried chicken
After checking out the Nightmare Before Christmas popup at Good Housekeeping (every Wednesday until the last Wednesday of the year, December 27), we headed over to the newish RBTA. It’s a tiny Japanese joint serving robata and delightful small plates.
I can never resist Japanese fried chicken (karaage) so we got that. I was amazed how light the batter was. The chicken was super juicy since it was chicken thigh meat. Highly recommend this dish.
pickles
The pickles and seaweed salad was another great appetizer dish.
curry rice balls
My friend wanted to try the curry rice balls which I admit was not my favorite but I can see how warm and comforting they’d be for others. I prefer my curry on a plate with lots of rice. These almost seemed like a tease.
robata
We chose three skewers and they were all okay. We got the shitake mushrooms, negi ma (chicken and green onions) and ribeye with yuzu butter. I would probably skip the skewers next time for more small plates. Although the miso cod, scallops and spot prawns sound great.
fried rice
We were torn about which fried rice to get; unagi (eel) or shrimp. In the end, we went with the shrimp which turned out to be pretty good. The rice was well separated and I could have had my own bowl of it. Instead, sharing it with two others and the other dishes left me sated but not over stuffed.
I’d like to also try the uni pasta next time. The raw blue prawn topped with uni sounds decadent as well.
Highland Park is really a great neighborhood with lots of fun restaurants and bars.
RBTA
5629 1/2 N Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042 — (323) 259-6474© The Minty 2017