Gu Gu Sushi [RESTAURANT REVIEW]
Sushi Chef Alex Kim signals his satisfaction with freshly completed Rainbow Roll.
Sushi bars in the South Bay have a long tradition of names that mean nothing in Japanese, going back to Hermosa’s Cher Ton Ton of Tokyo in the 1970s. There wasn’t another Cher Ton Ton actually in Tokyo, and if there was the name would still have been a mishmash of French slang. The odd exception aside, things haven’t changed much. Some sushi bars stick with descriptive American names, like Fusion Sushi or Paradise Sushi, and others go for evocative names such as Banzai Beach.
Then there’s Gu Gu Sushi in Hermosa, which I assumed was a Japanese name until I asked someone who worked there. He didn’t know what it meant, just that it wasn’t Japanese or Korean. I asked a manager and found that she didn’t know precisely what it meant either, but it means something like “friendly” – in Croatian. One of the owners hails from there and he named the place, though apparently without telling the staff why. (When I asked a local Croatian exactly what Gu Gu meant, she said that there are a number of words that sound similar, so it was still impossible to pin down the truth.)
It’s fitting for the name to be linked to no specific language or culture, because the sushi at Gu Gu has almost nothing to do with traditional sushi, in style, construction, or flavor. Traditional nigiri sushi, the delicately seasoned pieces of fish on squares of rice, is available at Gu Gu, but almost nobody orders it. Instead, the focus is on sushi rolls of all kinds – and I’m not talking about California rolls, except as a base for some more complicated creation that is then drizzled with various sauces, topped with sashimi, rolled in tempura batter and fried, or scorched with a blowtorch. Some rolls involve combinations of two or three of these techniques – the staff here seems to relish baroque complexity in preparations.
They are led by a cheerful fellow named Song who was wearing a rhinestone-studded headscarf when we were there, and wielded a chef’s knife, squeeze bottles filled with non-traditional ingredients like honey mustard and chili oil, and the ever-present torch in quick succession. At first, the torch seems like a gimmick, an element of theater as much as a kitchen tool, but once you experience the way that sauces caramelize and the way that fish changes flavor and texture, it’s obvious that the butane is not being expended needlessly.
Consider the Godfather Roll, which consists of sushi rice, lobster, spicy tuna, crab, deep-fried shrimp, avocado, and two types of seared tuna, topped with garlic butter and mushrooms and a healthy shot of Sriracha hot pepper sauce. The mention of garlic butter mushrooms makes it obvious that tradition is out the window, and there are enough kinds of fish in this one roll to make a good sushi assortment if presented separately. You might expect the flavor to be chaotic, the subtleties of seafood drowned out in the noise, but it doesn’t work out that way. There is a lot going on in every bite, a variety of textures and flavors that change by the moment. Spicy garlic butter with fish is not a new idea, but with raw or very lightly seared fish, it’s a new sensation. I picked out pieces of lobster, albacore, and seared tuna and tried them separately and in combination with some of the mushrooms and a dab of sauce, just to see how each worked, and enjoyed the experiment. It’s as bold a flavor statement as I’ve ever had using sushi materials, but it works.
We had selected the Godfather Roll as the first item on this visit, and decided to follow with something slightly simpler – the “Olympus” sashimi special of panko-fried tuna in olive oil topped with yuzu salsa and spicy ponzu sauce. (At another sushi bar this might be the spiciest, most complex thing on the menu – here, it was the heart of subtlety.) The very briefly seared fish topped with citrusy, spicy salsa was delicious but difficult to eat neatly because the chunky salsa often fell off the slices of fish when you picked it up. I liked the flavor but wished there was some neater way of eating it. I might have asked for a spoon — not a traditional way of eating sushi, but for that very reason it might have been appropriate.
Going even further from tradition, we tried a daily special called Japanese pizza, a thin bed of rice topped with crab, mushroom, mozzarella cheese, and two kinds of onion with a dash of tangy sweet vinegar and a lightly sweet and spicy sauce. This odd-sounding concoction was actually closer to a traditional Japanese aesthetic than almost anything else we tried at Gu Gu – the delicate flavors of crab and almost raw mushrooms were modified but not overwhelmed by mild cheese and sauces. I’d order it again if it’s offered.
The “Spider Bite” roll is a regular item, and another winner, made with crab, spicy tuna, soft shell crab, avocado, salmon, Ono tuna, and jalapenos, then baked and spread out on a plate drizzled with honey mustard and Sriracha. This is one of the most beautiful presentations I’ve seen, straight out of the food magazine spreads that you can’t hope to create at home. The mix of textures and flavors was very enjoyable, the sprinkling of chopped seared tuna a rich and meaty counterpoint to the more delicate raw fish and the sharp bite of jalapeno. The soft shell crab did get lost in the mix, more a crisp texture and background scent of sea than a major contributor to the flavor. I had ordered this roll because I like soft shell crab; I’d order it again because I like everything else that was going on around it.
During three separate visits I watched the traffic over the sushi bar and saw that the rolls and exotic dishes were being ordered about 20 times as often as traditional sushi. We ordered some ourselves, as a palate cleanser between exotic dishes, and I suspect that’s what others were doing too. The traditional tuna nigiri were neatly presented and gave us the first excuse of the visit to use the soy sauce and wasabi – everything else had been so fully flavored that adding anything else would have been silly.
It was a measure of how completely different this place was from the usual experience. Gu Gu Sushi is all about being a flavor explorer, trying bizarre combinations while listening to classic rock and watching chefs use unorthodox techniques. To steal a line from Star Trek, “It’s sushi, but not sushi as we know it.” It is in its own very lively separate universe, incongruously located in a strip mall in Hermosa Beach.
Gu Gu Sushi is located at 1121 Aviation Boulevard in Hermosa Beach, at the corner of Prospect. Parking lot, wheelchair access good, beer, wine, and sake served. Open 11:30 Am – 11 PM daily Mo-Sa, 3PM – 10 PM Su. Phone 310-374-6019.