Food So Good It Made Me Want To Get Into A Fist Fight
Ever since our epic food day together for Japan Day the delightfully obsessive food blogger Exile Kiss, Mr. Meatball and I have been talking about getting together for some more delightful Japanese food. This weekend, the three of us finally met for what would prove to be an extremely delightful meal. (For EK’s great and much more thorough write-up of the restaurant, go here)
The restaurant is tucked away in the Redondo Beach boardwalk, surrounded by restaurants full of drunkards eating fish and chips, fried oysters and I can only assume, hot dogs. The restaurant was empty when we arrived. Usually, if I were walking along a pier and saw an empty Japanese restaurant, I would assume it was pretty crummy. Here, it is very much not the case.
The entire little restaurant is run by Tomo-san and his wife. He does the cooking and she does everything else— serving, hosting, dishes, table clearing— everything. A totally out-of-place calm in a storm of belligerent high school students.
We delicately gorge on plate after plate of meticulous and wonderful Japanese comfort foods as Exile Kiss keeps on pouring us some of his special-ordered sake, Takeno Tsuyu Junmai sake, from the Yamagata Prefecture (so crisp and smooth, it tastes less like sake and more like a giant bottle of delightful mountain spring water). Chicken and rice porridge, sweet and spicy fried chicken wings which emit better sounds than most foods do taste, tempura fried chicken meatballs, chicken/lotus root sandwiches, heart melting stewed pork belly, fried chicken with sesame oil (absurdly delightful), plum rice balls, crispy and soft agedashi tofu…the list goes on. Everything is made from scratch, in house (including all broths, marinades, miso paste…everything).
For more than a few reasons, people need to just start going to this place. It’s that good. But what the biggest menu surprise of the night? Was it the slightly sweet ricotta cheese tofu? No, no. It was, amazingly, something so simple and seemingly obvious— a bacon wrapped cherry tomato. They came three on a skewer, completely crispy and wrapped tightly around the little ball of tomato. This is something I never would have thought to order.
The juices are so hot and bubbly on the inside that when you eat it, you have to carefully press the product between your tongue and the roof of you mouth, slowly, gently secreting the hot, bacony/tomatoey liquid out. Then you crunch down just when it stops burning you and you get a rush of flavor like an expertly prepared tomato and bacon soup created entirely in your mouth. It was sort of revelatory. It was the epitome of a skilled chef so comfortable with his own cooking that he can do something this simple without getting in his own way. Of COURSE bacon is delicious. Of COURSE the dish will be delicious. But he still took the time to perfect it without messing it up. It’s an easy dish to not get credit for, but he gets credit for it here.
Wait, but why do I want to get into a fist fight? Well, first of all, people just aren’t finding this restaurant. A lot of the blame goes to Tomo-san and his wife, obviously, for the location. It’s just not the ideal spot for a place like this. If it were somewhere else, they’d be packed constantly.
But as we’re finishing up our meal, they got a table of about twelve people who looked a little out of place. It was the sort of group you’d expect to find at a more upscale and well-known place like Katsuya. But they had a reservation. So somebody told them about Bincho, or someone at one point happened upon it. But here they were. And I was oddly engrossed.
Where did they come from? Would they totally surprise me and be closeted Japanese food specialists? Or was it just the person that made the reservation? Was it a total coincidence? An accident? This may be the best izakaya I’ve ever been to in my life…so what are these people doing here? How did they penetrate the hidden exterior of my secret food Bat Cave?
But I’m also really glad to see Tomo-san get business. So I’m happy they’re here, but for some reason, I really, really want them to appreciate it. I want Tomo-san to get the credit he deserves. I don’t want to see this great food be carelessly and thoughtlessly consumed, digested and sent out to the ocean.
So I watch. What are they going to order? Will they appreciate it? Will it taste good to them or would they have been just as happy anywhere else?
Food starts coming out. They ask for soy sauce and I cringe. Don’t they realize that the tables don’t have soy sauce? Don’t you want to try it before you just dip it in soy sauce? This man has created his own sauces by hand to complement each dish individually…
Then I start to hate myself. Why is this bothering me? These people aren’t mean (necessarily). They haven’t done anything intentionally wrong. They just don’t know any better.
They keep eating. We finish up. Now I just really want to know how they heard about this place. I’m curious. We thank Tomo-san and his wife profusely, then head toward their table. I’m about to ask them how they heard about the restaurant. I really want to know.
Then one of the more oblivious guys at the table turns to Tomo-san (now serving food because…well…THERE ARE ONLY TWO PEOPLE RUNNING THE ENTIRE RESTAURANT AND YOU’RE SITTING DOWN WITH A GROUP OF 12 PEOPLE AND ORDERING A LA CARTE). He says “You know what? Forget the chicken thing we ordered. I mean, we ordered it, like, a half hour ago. Okay? I mean…”
And then everybody else starts canceling their orders. My shoulders sag. I secretly hope one of them decides, out-of-the-blue, to start talking to me threateningly so that I have an excuse to get into a fist fight. But they don’t. And I don’t. Then everything feels a bit paradoxical and I have no good answers. Sometimes I guess I just infuriate myself.
This is the side of food snob-ism that I resent and regret, yet still creeps out sometimes anyway. But on the other hand, when you love something, and somebody treats it like crap, it’s going to be piss you off from time to time.
Oh well.
Izakaya Bincho
112 N International Boardwalk
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 376-3889
