On bustling Western Avenue in the heart of Gardena, Sakura-Ya and Chikara Mochi sit about 250 feet away from each other, frequented by South Bay residents for decades for fluffy mochi and cakey manju. They\u2019re two of the only traditional Japanese mochi shops in L.A., with blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it signage. <\/p>\n
Just a block away is Meiji Tofu Shop, a nearly 50-year-old producer that churns out fresh soy milk and tofu daily. Cross the street to find Otafuku \u2014 where the Akutsu family has been serving traditional Tokyo soba since 1997.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll find similar clusters of diverse Japanese food in strip malls across Gardena as well as Torrance, which has the largest East Asian population in all of L.A.<\/a> The two neighboring cities are home to the biggest suburban Japanese community in the United States \u2014 and a decades-old restaurant landscape that feels like a time capsule, yet continues to flourish as a haven for classic Japanese cuisine and hospitality.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019re stuck in the \u201990s,\u201d said South Bay native Daniel Son, the chef and owner of Gardena\u2019s Sushi Sonagi<\/a>. \u201cThese days, when everything is monetizing and content creating has to be so fresh, they don\u2019t care. They\u2019re just gonna make great product and quietly do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Japanese immigrants first came to the L.A. area in the late 1800s and early 1900s \u2014 many from San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake \u2014 as strawberry farmers. Unlike Little Tokyo, which has been subject to the whims of tourists and the changing landscape of downtown L.A., the suburban South Bay has maintained a more stable identity, according to Emily Anderson, a curator for Little Tokyo\u2019s Japanese American National Museum.<\/p>\n \u201cIn places like Torrance and Gardena, you have the development and preservation of Japanese American food \u2014 it [has] layers of history and struggle, but food ultimately being a source of comfort and identity,\u201d Anderson said. <\/p>\n When Torrance became the site of Toyota\u2019s North American headquarters in 1967, more Japanese immigrants, and food, came with it. Over the next few decades, dozens of restaurants opened in Torrance and Gardena, along with a growing number of Japanese supermarket chains like Tokyo Central, Nijiya Market and Mitsuwa Marketplace, giving neighbors a taste of home. <\/p>\n By the time Toyota left Torrance<\/a> for Texas in 2017, these businesses had proved themselves integral to the region\u2019s culinary fabric. Their networks, once primarily composed of Japanese immigrants and descendant families, had extended to residents of all backgrounds.<\/p>\n \u201cMy plan is to be the last bastion of Japanese food prepared the Japanese way,\u201d said former Tokyo resident Kristen McIntyre, owner of homestyle Japanese restaurant Fukagawa<\/a> in Gardena. <\/p>\n Many Japanese restaurant owners in the area have a \u201cserve what you want to eat\u201d mindset, said Otafuku owner Mieko Akutsu. \u201cWe never adjusted the flavor for American people.\u201d <\/p>\n In her case, that means serving three types of soba, including sarashina soba \u2014 a white noodle made using the core of the buckwheat plant \u2014 which became known as an upscale dish in Tokyo, where regular, darker soba became a popular working-class meal during the Edo period.<\/p>\n Today, restaurants like Sushi Sonagi, which opened in 2023, along with Michelin-starred Sushi Inaba in Torrance, lead the way in bringing Angelenos \u2014 and diners from across the country \u2014 to the South Bay, where troves of Japanese restaurants and shops, many immigrant-run and cash-only, shine in all their old-school glory. Many don\u2019t have PR firms or flashy Instagram accounts; some will give you a handwritten receipt and others don\u2019t have websites.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like [opening Sushi Sonagi] in the South Bay almost celebrates the diversity and the rich Asian American culture that\u2019s very deep here,\u201d said Son, who blends his Korean American heritage into his roughly 20-course omakase. \u201cIt\u2019s just really cool to bring more life to an area that I feel like is L.A.\u2019s little secret.\u201d<\/p>\n But sushi is merely the cusp of the region\u2019s offerings. Torrance and Gardena are L.A.\u2019s storied destinations for every type of Japanese food imaginable: Yoshoku restaurants, which combine Japanese and Western cooking, coexist alongside traditional izakayas, yakitori joints and newer businesses that hail from Japan<\/a>. Use these 18 spots as a starting point for some of the best \u2014 and some of the oldest \u2014 Japanese restaurants that have quietly put South Bay suburbs on the L.A. dining map.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On bustling Western Avenue in the heart of Gardena, Sakura-Ya and Chikara Mochi sit about 250 feet away…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":147798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,87161,84767,47718,6276,2961,17118,224,5337,87162,87164,11280,10686,15186,87163,87160,87159,47440],"class_list":{"0":"post-147797","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-fresh-soy-milk","11":"tag-gardena","12":"tag-japanese-food","13":"tag-l-a","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-little-tokyo","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-meiji","19":"tag-meiji-tofu-shop","20":"tag-rice","21":"tag-shop","22":"tag-south-bay","23":"tag-sushi-sonagi","24":"tag-tofu","25":"tag-torrance","26":"tag-type"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115032792953216751","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}