Sushi (good sushi) is one of my great vices. Living in Los Angeles gives you access to so many good sushi restaraunts, only if you're willing to wait/go out of your way. My local "hole in the wall" back in Cali was this place called Omino Sushi. I went there every weekend and the owner knew me on sight. He'd give me samples of new dishes he'd be working on and wanted my opinion on them. Awesome place, I miss it so much.
There was another sushi place in Old Town Pasadena that my friends and I were notorious at. The sushi chef there got to know us and came up with a special roll for us: the "911" roll. The story goes is that one night we were eating, predominantly, a lot of spicy tuna cut-rolls and we kept on telling him to make it hotter and hotter. By the end of the night he ran out of stuff to throw in to make it hot enough. Next week, we returned back to the place and he came prepared. He made us a special cut roll, and placed it infront of us. The spicy tuna center was an unnatural color of red.. think bright, BRIGHT red. On the outside was alternating pieces of grilled unagi and avocado. The roll was delicious, but FREAKING HOT. Come to find out, he went out during the week and bought a bottle of Dave's Insanity Sauce and decided to unleash it on us. Mwhahahaha. I miss that place, too.
Not a sushi place, but that has an awesome unagi donburi is Tokyo Lobby. The menu is a picture album, and if you spend enough time going through the album you'll find menu combination are cheaper ordering one way than another way!
Most often I'm a pretty traditional guy, my order usually consists of:
maguro
inari (throwback from growing up in Hawaii)
aji, otherwise saba
unagi
ankimo (rare, but Omino had it all the time)
uni (only if it's FRESH.. have had bad uni and it's not a good experience)
Also, a well done chirashi is a thing to behold. Mmmmm..
