Apparently Mikado broke new ground when it opened its doors in 1963 as the first Japanese restaurant to serve The Valley. We honor traditions, so we thought we would get a great good old fashion sushi experience coming here, but nope. Not so. At all. I think it was our worst night so far. They were just rude and loud. It was our last night in LA for now too, so it was very disappointing to end with having sushi here.

It is quite a nice sushi bar and restaurant, located inside the Best Western Mikado Hotel. There seems to be others who have had better experience than what we got. That is why we wanted to try it out. But I would never go back.

We sat at the sushi bar of course, hoping to pick up some tricks. I am still not used to the whole omakase thing, so I fumbled a bit when trying to ask the master what he would recommend. He just annoyed points to the list of fish on the wall behind him and did not want to talk or tell us anything at all. He wanted us to communicate via the paper menu, thank you very much!

We had some of what was on his menu and it was really good. We had Spanish mackerel, kanpachi (the leanest of the yellowtail family) and Crewelle Jack nigiri (which was supposed to be better and was) in addition to eel nigiri and a couple of rolls. If it was possible to extract the sushi chef and the waiters rude presence from this review, they would have done quite well. But it is about the experience.

The loud crowd next to us might have made him fed up with guest for the evening. I don’t know. The waiter were calling some of the people in that group names in Japanese, joking with the chef on their behalf. Really disrespectful.

The whole experience pretty much shut me up and the sushi chefs annoyed presence destroyed the whole meal. He just seemed sad and did not seem to want to be there (as I have felt with many of the places I have been to on this trip). Then he at least should let us have some room. Really uncomfortable.

Summary:

Sushi is an experience. If you want to feel good (or rather - not feel bad) in addition to having good sushi, this is not the place to go! Go to Asanebo instead!

Overall rating:
Presentation:
Fish/rice:
Service:
Price level:	Ok
Times visited:	1

General information:

Street address: 12600 Riverside Dr, North Hollywood, CA 91607-3411
Opening hours: Mon-Thu 11:30am-2:30pm, 5:30pm-10pm, Fri-Sat 5:30pm-10:30pm, Sun 5pm-9:30pm
Phone number: (818) 763-1963

How did you like Mikado - Studio City, Los Angeles?

• Not at all!
• Mediocre
• Ok
• Quite good
• Delicious!

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