Yu-Me is a revitalized version of a local favorite
by Richard Foss
As grand commercial thoroughfares go, Morningside Drive in Manhattan Beach does not stand out. Many readers who just saw that sentence will be scratching their head and looking for the street on a map. I’ll help you – it extends three short blocks either side of Manhattan Beach Boulevard just west of Valley. It’s best known for being the seaward edge of the Metlox center, a corner anchored by the former Pitfire Pizza, which recently closed.
Morningside Drive does have one commercial enterprise to its credit, the restaurant that was formerly known as Fusion Sushi. Despite the name, they offered a wide variety of cooked dishes and were known as a good family restaurant with moderate prices. I found it to be an adequate everyday place, but not particularly impressive.
When I saw the signs going up for a new restaurant at the same location called Yu-Me, I assumed that a new tenant was moving in, but when I went inside and looked at the menu, it looked familiar. A staff member explained that Fusion Sushi had rebranded and added some menu items. Their new name means “Dream.” Even though the management and most of the staff are the same, on three visits I found the food to be considerably better than I had remembered from previous visits.
One of the starters I order to test Japanese restaurants is agedashi tofu, squares of tofu lightly dusted in cornstarch and fried, which have sauce poured over them immediately before serving. When it first arrives at the table, the exterior crispness and molten interior is such a wonderful contrast that I have to eat a piece even though I risk burning my tongue. If you wait until it cools enough for safe eating, the crispness is gone, but it has soaked up some of the flavor from the sauce. The sauce here is different from the usual soy sauce and rice wine mix in that it has some truffle in it – not just truffle oil, but actual truffle. Someone in the kitchen here really likes truffles, and they appear in a number of different dishes. In this case, the mushroomy flavor was a very welcome addition.
Other starters that we tried included the crispy squid legs called geso, mixed tempura, and an item called the mango salmon special that is not actually a special, but is available every day. That item is made of spicy crabmeat and a chunk of mango wrapped in salmon and anointed with a dash of yuzu sauce. The yuzu lends a citrusy tang to the sweet mango and gently spicy crabmeat (it’s real crab, rather than the fake stuff you find at most moderately priced restaurants). The flavor balance is spot on, and I recommend it.
The squid legs were very good too, though not what you might expect. These aren’t standard calamari, but tiny squid with a slightly different, more dense texture. Squid doesn’t have a lot of flavor by itself and is better considered as a vehicle for breading and sauce, and this was nicely crisp and served with a surprisingly peppery dip. After that squid and tofu showed they usually have excellent control of the fryer, the tempura was a letdown. The batter didn’t have the lightness and crunch that makes tempura wonderful, and it was oily. Since the other items from the fryer were so good, we assume this was a momentary lapse.
Among the sushi items we tried were the Manhattan Beach roll and the Captain America roll, the latter a novelty that included crawfish and shrimp tempura with spicy tuna topped with freshwater eel and avocado and sweet eel sauce. A fusion of this many flavors violates the traditional Japanese aesthetic of savoring each individual element, but as you ate it, you could appreciate the variety of textures and slight differences in flavor.
I was less delighted with the Manhattan Beach roll, made with blue crab and avocado topped with jalapeno, honey mustard dressing, and masago, because the mustard and pepper overwhelmed the other flavors. The concept was sound, because the slight earthiness of the jalapeño and sweet mustard go well together, but the roll arrived with big pieces of jalapeno smothered in about twice as much mustard as we actually wanted. Order this with light mustard if you like the spiciness, or ask them to put it on the side so that you can add it to taste.
On the first visit we paired our food with cocktails from their list, on the second two visits with sake. While this bar has some excellent Japanese whiskies, their mixed drinks were poorly made, with a simple drink like an old fashioned over-bittered to the point that I didn’t finish it. There are good sakes and beer, and that’s what to get with your meal here.
Among the main courses, we tried a bowl of unagi (eel) ramen, Korean-style short ribs, pork belly and eel bowls, and a combination of katsu pork with chashu ramen. There is an unusually wide selection of choose-your-combination plate offerings here, and they offer a lot of food at the modest price of $20 for a two-item combo. The big bowl of ramen had a fine creamy bone broth with meat and vegetables, and the fried pork cutlet was both immense and tender.
The pork belly and eel were both served in hot stone bowls over rice alongside red ginger, picked daikon radish, green onion, and other accompaniments. They differed slightly, with slices of Japanese omelet with sesame in the eel bowl, but both offered a fine variety of flavors. The Korean-style short ribs were also served in one of these bowls and had very un-Japanese accompaniments of zucchini, onion, and bell pepper. It was good but not essential, but if you are dining with someone who doesn’t like the more traditional Japanese vegetables, it’s a safe choice.
One of the things that sets Yu-Me apart from most other restaurants in downtown Manhattan Beach is the relatively serene atmosphere, with a moderate volume level and well-spaced tables. It’s still a family restaurant, but also a date night destination where you won’t have to yell at your dining companion to be heard. There has been a transformation around the edges here, with generally more assured cooking in a pleasant space. In an era when most local places are pushing the loud party atmosphere, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Yu-Me is at 1150 Morningside Drive in Manhattan Beach. Open daily at 11 a.m., close 9:30 p.m. Su-Thu, 10:30 Fr-Su. Underground parking adjacent or street parking, wheelchair access good, some vegan items, full bar, corkage $25. Phone 310-802-1160, menu at yumejapanesesushi.com. ER
