Just Meh at Maruhide Uni Club - Torrance

I LOVE uni, but I can only LIKE Maruhide Uni Club. The club is classy, and they wield the most powerful culinary ingredient second to saffron, but with great power comes great responsibility, and they don't seem to step up and take it.

I LOVE uni raw, but I can only LIKE uni grilled. The salty, briny, flavor-burst bubbles get a little bit lost in cooking, though the flavor and texture stay put. Unfortunately, some pieces get a bitter, mouth-puckering finish when they're flame-kissed. I'm glad I tried the Grilled Uni, but in the future, I'd rather leave it be.

What could possibly be better than combining the already-creamy texture of uni with even more cream? A better job combining the two, that's what. The pasta is coated with a sticky, heavy, orange-tinged cream that tastes like nothing but cream. All the uni is lost in the Uni Cream Pasta, and the only flavor you get is from the garnishing slices on top. I usually love food in its purest form. but sticky cream sticks out as a glaring exception.

The Uni Gratin is better-described as cream soup. Shrimp and scallops doused in cream are a solid chowder, but there's no uni within the dish, just the decorative slices on top. There are worse things to put on top, but I would like to see it incorporated instead of hanging out like an afterthought.

The Green Tea Mousse also tasted like an afterthought, albeit a pretty good one. Nice tea flavor with just the right hint of sweetness but I definitely only liked it.

I feel like rating Maruhide Uni Club isn't even fair. The flavor of uni is unique, and the depth of its flavor is both incredible and indescribable. At Maruhide the uni has a limitless potential it doesn't ever reach. I'd still go back, but I'd like to see a little more complexity and skill. With such an amazing ingredient, I expect to be more impressed.

Shrimp Lover - Redondo Beach

Fire Crab is by far my fave, but Fire Crab is FAR. Shrimp Lover, on the other hand, is literally a walk in the park. Still I have to think hard every time I choose the palm-treed path of least resistance, not because Shrimp Lover isn't good, but because Fire Crab is just that much better.

Shrimp Lover's Medley Mix is a murky, muddy mélange of garlic with herbs and spices, steamed in a bucket of butter. The texture is chunky, and the spice combination isn't quite as smooth as Fire Crab's seamless red-hot Cajun burn. The Crawfish are by far the best, and the Clams are infallibly fresh, but that combination come out a little weird. 

Shrimp Lover does lose major points for not including sauce-soaked corn in their buckets. You have to pay extra for a sweetly-steamed cob and drop it into the bottom of your bucket to get the true taste of not-good-enough.

Sure, Shrimp Lover is close, but I wouldn't exactly call it the Fire Crab of Redondo Beach. It's half the quality for a miniscule fraction of the time, but it's probably the closest thing we've got so I've got some serious decisions to make.

Fire Crab - Garden Grove

Fire crab sounds like the kind of thing you catch when you pay for something that shouldn't be for sale. But don't let the name deter you, Fire Crab turns out to be quite the catch in Garden Grove. 

The Mix & Match deal is a seafood steal, a 3-pound bucket for 33. The crawfish is a contagious crustacean, soaked through with sizzling, slightly-searing fire sauce. The mussels stay tender when steamed, and the seafood sauce soaks the cobs of corn for the sweetest burn.

Make sure to order extra corn because one cob is never enough, and don't skimp on the 3-dollar Sapporo to wash it all down. 

I can't think of a single time in my life when I would want to be burned by anything called a fire crab, but this Fire Crab can scorch my Saturday anytime.

Somewhat Lacking Lukshon - Culver City

While Father's Office showcases some real brilliance, Lukshon is not what I would describe as Sang Yoon's finest work. Although I love the small, share-able dishes inspired by Asia and kissed by Hawaiian sun, I just can't say I was all that impressed.

It all starts with a simple fried rice because no Asian fusion is complete without some form of fried rice featuring some kooky combo of prime ingredients. The Crab Fried Rice fits the bill nicely, the barely-there blue crab clawing for recognition in a greasy-but-dry rice bowl with not enough egg. 

The Tea Leaf Salad was the opposite of greasy and fried, a refreshing reprieve. This creative cabbage punctuated by crunchy chana dal and a skimpy hint of shrimp had a sprinkling of tea that added its own dark flavor, evenly coating each cabbage shred.

The Crispy Whole Branzino was an impressive aesthetic, a whole un-filleted fried fish captured in a stunning mid-swim. The fish was undoubtedly fresh, and the puddle of pecel sauce was great, but the fish hadn't soaked up any flavor and became pretty forgettable.

The Sichuan Dumplings would have fared better as fusion fare. The kurobuta pork makes a seamless filling, and Sichuan's signature ma-la burn is escalated by a sweet but sour vinaigrette. I could drink that whole bowl of sauce, but the dumplings were a little dumbed-down.

Lukshon makes nice food with a smattering of creativity and charisma, but it's dishes like the Hawaiian Butterfish I was hoping to see more of. The cubes of fish melt in your mouth like the smoothest ceviche, covered with sweetened lime and coconut snow.

When you concoct a tasting menu, you want to show your best, and the Warm Persimmon Toffee Cake wouldn't be the note I would choose to end on. The cake with persimmon jam comes across a little too much like the fruitcake you get at Christmas except it was made by a more skilled Asian auntie. The brown butter ice cream is absolutely incredible, adding savory rich notes and giving depth to a shallower-tasting cake.

The problem with Asian cuisine is that its transition to fine dining doesn't always work. Asian cuisine is often a display of culinary prowess by a starving people, people whose creativity is driven by the need to please the palate with what the better-off throw away. I would hardly call anything at Lukshon a throwaway, but the notes of true brilliance are often masked by discordance and some flavorful disconnect

Shanghai Dumpling House - San Gabriel

I never cry for any reason. I usually have the once-a-year shedding of the tears, but I'm starting think it's a literal cry for attention from my long-neglected tear ducts. Nothing makes me cry. Not weddings, not births, not fatigue, not emotion. But show me a person who hasn't tried dumplings and I'd probably use up my annual arsenal of tears.

Barring a life-threatening allergy, there's no good reason to deprive yourself of these dimpled delights, and I'll be crying tears of joy while I haul your desolate, sorry self to Shanghai Dumpling House for the classic Pork and Crab Xiao Long Bao, the delicate mix of soft pork with a tinge of crabby brine you've been missing all your life.

Shanghai Dumpling House knows the classics, and they're not afraid to bring on the heat. The Spicy Xiao Long Bao won't make you cry from just the slightest red-tinged burn, but I'd be shocked if I didn't see at least one glistening happy-tear while sipping the savory soup.

You may not have had a lot of dumplings in your lifetime but I have. It's hard to impress me, and I'm rarely blown away. Case and point, I find Din Tai Fung to be highly mediocre. So believe me when I tell you that the Salty Egg Yolk Pork Dumplings will change your life because they blew my mind. The egg acts as a thickener, adding a grainy texture with an element of richness to the already-savory soup.

I've never experienced half of what I tried at Shanghai Dumpling House, and I don't know if an experience elsewhere will ever come close. Now I'm shedding enough tears of sadness to fill all the dumplings at Shanghai Dumpling House because I may never enjoy other dumplings again.