Jinpachi

A few weeks back, I was invited to go to a food bloggers event hosted by fooddigger.com, and was really surprised to be even asked - I keep thinking like 2 people read this food blog- and heartily accepted the invitation.

After arriving at Jinpachi, I was lead to a somewhat secluded set of tables, with people already there, chatting and enjoying some appetizers. They were all super nice - it's so cool to be able to name some restaurant I haven't tried yet, and for someone at the table to have already been there and to give me a synopsis. Awesome. Well, let's just skip ahead to the food...

Shishito Peppers were sitting around in a little dish, which kept us from starving inbetween the long pauses between each course. These were pretty good, and not as tongue burning hot as I thought they were going to be. The cooking process softened them up a lot, and were bordering on too soggy by the time I got to them, but again, ok to munch on while waiting.
Spicy tuna on crispy rice - a bunch of these were brought on a plate as an appetizer. I really liked these a lot, but put spicy tuna on rice and it's hard for me to DISlike it. Anyways, these were good.

Each of these got this placed in front of us - red snapper and salmon sashimi, in a light soy (?) sauce. The salmon was tender and soft, but the red snapper was just okay.


This is the non-fish version, served to John (of LA Pizza) who sat across from me and is allergic to fish. I am pretty sure one of these is scallops but I don't know what the other one is...I'm sure it's not fish though, heh.

Grilled black cod, with a tempura shishito pepper and two squirts each of black and white miso on either side. The cod was very good, with a sweet flavor to it, especially after dipping it in the miso.

John's non fish version was chicken teriyaki, with asparagus and sliced potato. This looked really good too - it looked like a complete meal!

Now the sushi. Bluefin tuna, and fatty tuna. I got one piece each of these. I love me some tuna, so this was top notch. I love when sushi melts on the tongue...

Then came a platter of (from the back to front) halibut, yellowtail, and albacore. The albacore and yellowtail were really good, but the halibut was not very good in my opinion. The texture was way too hard and too fishy.

John's non fish version - sea eel. He was worried that eel was too close to fish - is eel a fish? So I got to eat it, in trade for my glass of sake (a win-win situation, as I don't drink.) Pretty good, but I really like eel. I think it could have used a BIT more eel sauce, and could have been toasted to have those crispy edges I love in eel, but it was still solid, in any case.

Next up, came shrimp tempura roll - this was really tasty, the tempura was super fresh and crunchy, a great simple roll that exceeded my expectations.

The scary good uni that came to the table - scarily fresh, once hitting the tongue it dissipated into a tasty essence of the ocean. Very good, very rich, not something I would order at the usual cheaper sushi joints I would go to, because I would worry about quality. This was way tasty, can I emphasize this enough? Haha.

Shad sushi - this is the first shad I've had - and probably the last, if I can help it. Texture was too hard, had to chew it a lot, the rice was too vinegary (maybe to make up for the oiliness of the shad?) Not my bag.

This was the first blue crab handroll that was brought to the table, and it was for John to make up for the shad. More on that later, as we all got one...

Supposedly our last few pieces of sushi, salmon and more albacore? Heck, I'm not complaining, really good and solid sushi.

We requested these blue crab handrolls as our last order, as these are freakin' amazing good. The crab meat is super fresh, sweet, and cold, as a good contrast to the avocado and cucumber. The way the sushi chef rolled it, he added an extra piece of seaweed to the bottom, so when you started eating the handroll from one side, all the fillings wouldn't just start falling out of the end. Very considerate of him! This was definitely a great dish to finish the meal with.

Dessert consisted of different flavors of mochi ice cream, halved and presented to us on a plate. Chocolate, vanilla and green tea were the different flavors. I've had many a mochi ice cream, and this was alright. Hard to mess this up unless you let it sit out and melt to the point where they're unedible.

The fooddiggers were aware of the lacking dessert choices that Jinpachi had to offer, ever since their dessert chef had left! So they nicely bought us macarons from Paulette - which they swore were just as good as the kind they've had in Paris. Amazing! The two flavors that I got were pistachio and praline. Both had great texture and delicious interiors to their fillings.

I just want to note, this meal was comped by fooddigger (thanks!!), so I have no idea on pricing. This is the first time I've gotten a meal comped for any food posting. Thanks again to fooddigger, and all the awesome foodbloggers I met! (Shout out to Caroline on Crack, Gourmet Pigs, Tangbro, LA-OC Foodie, Potential Gold and John of LA Pizza!) Everyone is so nice and it's so fun to talk about food!

Jinpachi
8711 Santa Monica Blvd
West Hollywood, CA

Paulette
9466 Charleville Boulevard at Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90212