Kumo & Sweet Lady Jane

That's right ladies and gents, today is my 50th blog and Chase and I really went out in style last night in celebration. We first went to see Craig Robinson (Darrell from the office) at the Hollywood Improv (which was incredibly entertaining, I highly recommend going sometime), then we walked down Melrose, in the cold and rain mind you, to new-ish sushi restaurant Kumo. I'd read online about Kumo, not really any reviews, just about the restaurant itself. Kumo means cloud in Japanese, so the whole interior is white. I had read the menu online, which looked good, but mostly we went here out of convenience. Once we got there, a few of the things we had seen on the online menu weren't listed (i.e. tuna steak with caramelized miso glaze), so that was pretty disappointing. Chase was really wanting something cooked, but I was more interested in the sushi. We both tried ordering some of the things that we wanted, and everything I ordered was pretty tasty, but the things he ordered were not very good. We started with spicy tuna tacos, which I thought was the best dish of the night. It tasted somewhat similar to the crispy sesame tuna dish at Katsu-ya. Large hunks of spicy tuna were stuffed into a taco shell-shaped wonton with a thin slice of avocado, eel sauce, and creme fraiche on top. Next we had the lobster, blue crab, and black pepper roll. It was alright, but with most lobster dishes, it was a little fishy. Pepper on a sushi roll was a little different, but overall the roll was much better when dipped in soy sauce. Next we had the lobster miso soup, which Chase really didn't care for. I didn't much like it either. There wasn't actually any lobster meat in the soup, so I suppose the broth was just cooked with lobster and then it was removed? Or perhaps lobster stock, though I'm not sure there is such a thing? Following that, Chase also ordered a soft-shell crab tempura, which neither of us really liked. For a grand finale we had the Yellowtail Love Affair roll, which was thinly sliced yellowtail with tri-colored peppers. It was really fresh and delicious. For the way it tasted, everything was a was overpriced. The lobster roll was $25, the yellowtail roll was $20. The only thing that I really felt like we got what we paid for was the tuna tacos, at $14, though I believe there is a similar item on the menu at El Toro on Wilshire for much cheaper. We didn't really want to stay for dessert, so we grabbed a piece of boysenberry pie from Sweet Lady Jane next door. We've had a couple of things from Sweet Lady Jane that were really good before (the three-berry cake is amazing), but the pie from last night just wasn't really that good, primarily because it tasted like brandy. Still, SLJ's reputation precedes it and you should still go get a slice or something delectable, just steer clear of the boysenberry pie.

http://www.kumo-la.com/menus.html

http://www.sweetladyjane.com/