Chaya Venice

Chaya has it's own small empire here in Los Angeles, with Chaya Venice, Chaya in Beverly Hills, and M de Chaya in Hollywood. I've tried two out of the three and it's unclear to me what the buzz about. If you observe a macrobiotic diet, I can understand the lure of M de Chaya, as I'm sure eating this way is pretty taxing to cook on your own or to find at many restaurants. The sushi here is pretty good, but there isn't much of a selection. Another problem here is parking. Located on the same corner of Melrose as Pink's and Pinkberry. Once you've found parking, actually eating here is a breeze. It's cafe style, so you can just go up and order and sit down and eat on your own time. Across town is somewhat uninspired Chaya Venice. I came here for a work dinner and the group of us started off with some run of the mill sushi (i.e. California roll, spicy tuna roll, shrimp tempura roll). All of it was sort of blah. I opted to forego an entree and get the goat cheese salad and the ceviche appetizer. The goat cheese salad was amazing. The fried goat cheese balls were perfectly warm and tender and blended well with the mixed greens and balsamic dressing. The ceviche was good, but different. It was pretty heavy on the red onion and had corn in it. The corn didn't really mesh very well with the citrus of the dish either and it could have been better if the corn was replaced by tomatoes, an ingredient normally found in ceviche. Everyone else in the group seemed to feel pretty unenthusiastic about their dinners. When the dessert menu came around, we ordered about one of everything: a butterscotch creme brulee, sorbet, chocolate croissant bread pudding, apple tatin, and the banana tart with banana ice cream topped with a chocolate covered banana (too much banana if you ask me!). I tried a little of each and have to say only a couple were pretty impressive. I don't care much for soggy bread, so usually bread pudding is out of the picture, but I guess since it was made with a crispy croissant it was exceptional. The butterscoth creme brulee was good, but not really that memorable. Everything else was fairly mediocre. I've also tried Chaya Venice for lunch and been more pleased with their bento box. If you have a hankering for a seafood or sushi dinner, though, I'd recommend finding another restaurant that would either be more affordable (entrees at Chaya are between $25-30) or at least if you are going to pay that much for a dinner, you are getting more bang for your buck.

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