Echigo

I had the Chef's Special at Echigo last night and it was so good. The fish was super fresh and tasted so clean. We had things like white fish, albacore, butter fish, baby tuna and blue crab. The server comes out and serves you each piece one by one, and will continue this process until you get to your finale of the blue crab roll. She/he will tell you when to use soy sauce and when to not - because certain pieces come out with sauce on them already and would "ruin" the roll if you added soy sauce (salt) to them.\t\n\t\nOverall, it was a great experience. It was a bit pricey, but definitely worth the money.

This restaurant regrettably provided one of the worst dining experiences we've had in LA in a long time. My wife and I go out for sushi regularly, and had heard lots of hype about how good this place was. After going, I truly can't understand what others see in this place. It's billed as being more genuine sushi, and sticking to only the traditional applications. However, they take this concept to an almost pretentious level, and fall short in several areas.\t\n\t\n\t\n1) The ambiance is bland at best, and considering the prices of the sushi, almost offensive.\t\n\t\n\t\n2) The prices were on the face fairly average, however, the sizes of the sushi were so minuscule that it really escalates the relative pricing of this restaurant into the realm of far more elegant options. My wife ordered salmon sashimi for $14, and got 6 slices of paper thin salmon that weighed literally an ounce and a half.\t\n\t\n\t\n3) The fish quality is only mediocre. The tuna sashimi was dry and not uniformly cut, I'm sure in an attempt to make use of the scraps.\t\n\t\n\t\n4) The sushi chef is full of himself. I might be able to get over the fact that they refuse to sell basics like miso soup, and spicy tuna rolls, (though I've been to Tokyo, and these items are commonplace there). However, his rolls are not the traditional hand rolls, and he refused to cut them into more reasonable pieces. They appeared haphazardly assembled with no concern whatsoever for visual presentation.\t\n\t\n\t\n5) The service was dismal. At least they kept refilling our tea, because it took us about 40 minutes to get our food, and even then, it came out to us so fragmented that the rest of my party was practically done with their food before I had even gotten a single one of my orders.\t\n\t\n\t\nNeedless to say, it will be the last time I patronage this restaurant, and I encourage you to save your time and senses and avoid it altogether.

It's ironic how the guy that worked at Nozawa left to open Sasabune and the guy who opened Echigo left Sasabune to open a business on his own. And guess what.....Nozawa is still best , then Sasabune and then Echigo. Master is always best