Start with chawanmushi, trembling under a bitter ginkgo nut. Next, the supple muscle of snapper, luminous with yuzu. When the fish is gone, a server recalibrates the sauce that’s left with dashi, so you can drink it. (Yes, you want to drink it.)
The chef Nozomi Mori is at work behind the counter: She etches her blade into the milky top of a scallop so it yields its sweetness more immediately. She carves sheer petals out of swordtip squid — changing the way you’ll receive it — before pressing it into an airy cushion of rice.
At her eight-seat sushi counter Mori Nozomi, Ms. Mori is serving a 26-course omakase with precise control of texture and seasoning, cooking with a deep intelligence for the mechanics of tongue and teeth, for the sensual machinery of the mouth. (How many chefs forget about this? Let’s be honest, how many chefs never understood it to begin with?)
Los Angeles is the sprawling sushi capital of the country, bending and breaking so many of the rules established for it in Japan, even as it replicates others. Before the chef Niki Nakayama was known for her Michelin-starred kaiseki restaurant n/naka, she had a sushi bar on Melrose Avenue where Japanese men would sometimes walk in, see who was cooking — a woman? — and turn right around.
Excluding women from sushi might be seen as part of the tradition of sushi. It’s why, a quarter of a century later, Ms. Mori still draws attention for her all-women team. But the thrill of Mori Nozomi is in Ms. Mori’s distinct style as a chef — the way she annotates the singular focus of the omakase with some of the more complex, seasonal digressions of kaiseki and rituals of the Japanese tea ceremony.
A meal flows serenely here, from one captivating dish to the next. You won’t find the spectacle of the bromakase — no stunts or swagger. No torched Wagyu, no flurry of truffles, no caviar bumps. No grand gestures designed to convince you that a couple of hours at this softly buzzing counter in the Sawtelle neighborhood, shoulder to shoulder with a handful of strangers, is worth your time or the $250 price tag.
Ms. Mori shops for vegetables at the Santa Monica Farmers Market each week to make her excellent pickles, and turns asparagus into juicy tempura with a neon flutter of bottarga. Each morning, she fills mochi with icily sweet red bean paste, and each night, at the end of the meal, she serves these tender wagashi with the matcha that she whisks.
The closest thing to a show? Most nights, Ms. Mori brings out a butchered tuna and runs the edge of a spoon along its bones. This meat goes into a compact toru taku handroll that she passes to you over the counter.
The sushi industry is wasteful by definition, and it’s rare to see a chef acknowledge, let alone honor, the scraps. Ms. Mori has your attention. She could direct you to anything she wants.
What she shows you here, besides fatty tuna and horsehair crab and plump ripples of sea urchin flown in from Hokkaido, is the darker side of all that opulence — its gruesome, giving carcass. You might not want to see it, but here is the full breadth of its pleasure, down to the bone.
Ms. Mori was born in Hyogo Prefecture, but started cooking at what might be considered the bottom of the sushi ladder — an American restaurant — assembling the sticky, Rabelaisian dragon rolls of Southern California, curves fanned with avocado and thick, weeping pieces of fish.
This is not that narrative of a lifetime of tutelage under a sushi master. It is not the cliché of years trudging by without touching a knife. Ms. Mori worked at Moto Azabu and later the high-end Japanese chain Ginza Onodera before taking over this old sushi space on Pico Boulevard. She had a vision.
She arranged eight seats at the bar and got rid of all the tables, leaving one for a moody ikebana floral arrangement that she designs herself each week. The room is cool and airy, barely decorated except for a single sheathed knife on a stand behind the counter and a small collection of ceramics, which Ms. Mori wrapped and carried over from Japan in a suitcase.
Music plays softly, always instrumental, usually piano, and leans toward the yearning scores of Studio Ghibli films.
There is a server with an iPad, occasionally showing you photos of a dramatic needle-nosed fish or some other ingredient or farm. This, like hyping your tuna’s international paperwork, is an essential ritual of certain sushi restaurants, but I have to admit it always makes me feel like I’m stuck with my family as they scroll through iPhoto.
On my most recent visit, I was delighted to see there were four 30-something women dining on their own, asking the server questions, taking a photo here and there, chatting with the woman next to them, and just generally having a good time. I know, it shouldn’t be so remarkable to see several women out on their own for dinner, but men still dominate the realm of the omakase — not just as chefs, but also as diners. That night at Mori Nozomi, I noticed only one.
“The chef here is a woman,” he said to his date, quite loudly. “Can you believe it?” Everyone heard, no one answered — I mean, what could you say? But Ms. Mori looked up, knife in hand, and smiled.
Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
Tejal Rao is a chief restaurant critic for The Times.
The post Omakase Has Gotten Out of Hand. Mori Nozomi Is the Sublime Answer. appeared first on New York Times.
