Thursday, April 21, 2011

The Mikado Japanese Restaurant

My daughter is coming to visit and wants to go to a sushi restaurant for her birthday.  We wanted to stay in the San Fernando Valley since we are going to a play in Burbank after dinner.  A friend had suggested The Mikado saying that it serves the best sushi she has ever tasted. It is attached to the Best Western on Riverside Drive in Studio City and my experience with restaurants attached to motels has never been very great because of that, even though it is in my neighborhood, I have never been there. After scratching my head for many days trying to where to go when W is here, BK suggested we go to The Mikado today for lunch.  I agreed.  So after seeing a wonderful movie, we drove to the Best Western’s restaurant.
My first surprise was the very nice interior.  The restaurant sparkled.  We were greeted in the usual Japanese way.  We were seated at a very nice white tableclothed booth that had a fresh flower and a very cute soy sauce container (all low sodium). Then we were given warm towels to wash our hands which we did.  They had some fragrance and was really nice.  And now to the most important part – the food. Right after we were given the towles we were given a little cucumber appetizer that was so good, we hoped this was just a taste of what was to cme  I was only going to order sushi, which I did.  They had a sushi combo but I decided to get the rainbow roll ($15) and a tuna roll ($5.25) and I wasn’t disappointed.  There were 6 pieces of tuna roll and a very large rainbow roll with salmon, albacore, shrimp and tuna over an excellent California roll.

BA ordered a special lunch box.  She picked teriyaki chicken and California roll.  With that meal came a side salad, which BK said was delicious, a small fried potato, an egg roll, a small carrot and tiny broccoli with something on it that BK liked, white rice and a strawberry and orange ($12).  She cleaned her plate, declaring everything delicious. after cleaning our table, we were both given some orange which was just perfect.
This was the lunch menu so I asked to see the dinner menu.  There are fewer combinations and some things are more expensive.  They also have other dishes.  I enjoyed this so much that I made a reservation for next Friday to celebrate W’s birthday.  I don’t think anyone will be disappointed.

The Mikado has been in business since 1963, the first sushi restaurant in the Valley.  There are many more now and maybe some are better but we were both very happy with this choice.  The Mikado is  at 12800 Riverside Dr. – (818)-763-1963.  They are open for lunch (11:30 – 2:00) and for dinner (5:30 - ?).