There are some restaurants serving food that demands a new vocabulary – items superficially similar to some traditional cuisine or category, but with enough differences that a new nomenclature is called for. Perhaps the most tortured term is sushi, which you may know is the Japanese word for “sour taste,” a reference to an ancient snack of vinegared rice with lightly fermented fish.]
Over the centuries the term expanded to include rice with fresh raw fish, then with vegetables or slices of omelet and no fish at all. In the last few decades the variety has exploded to include sushi rolls stuffed with just about anything – spicy beef, avocado, cream cheese, and mayonnaise-laced crab salad being only a few of the items that are alien to Japanese culture.
One of the interesting and completely modern variants that still bears the name is featured at B.A.D. Sushi in El Segundo, a place with another unusual choice when it comes to the name department. (The name stands for “Best and Delicious” in case you were wondering.) This little restaurant on Main Street actually has a somewhat traditional minimalist décor, but the items on the menu are as wild as they come. We decided to start with a traditional seaweed salad, some green onion tempura, and fried aji, the little fish that is butterflied and served with the tail still on so you can use it as a handle.
The seaweed salad arrived first, and from the first bite it was clear that the ideas about flavor here were different. Instead of being tart and vinegary, which is embodied in the very name sushi, it was lightly sweet. The idea isn’t bad, but I happen to prefer the traditional version as a starter, since the tart flavor whets the appetite. The sweet side of the palate was also present in the miso-based sauce that was drizzled over the fried green onion – a very good flavor combination, though I would have preferred that sauce on the side so I could have dipped it myself. Putting it on top meant that some pieces were coated with it and some had no sauce at all, and the coated pieces lost their prized crispness faster. The only starter that really didn’t work was the most traditional, the fried aji. The breading was very thick, and on the first bite the fish came out in a whole piece, leaving a hollow tube of batter behind. The flavor of the fish itself was fine, but the preparation was not successful.
While we sipped sake and waited for the next course I had a chance to admire the surroundings, and I noticed a small golden scroll on a Buddhist altar near the entrance to the kitchen. The writing was in Thai, as was some of the conversation I heard between employees, and it made the flavor shift make sense – this was sushi filtered through Thai sensibilities. Those influences were obvious in our next two items, a “Playboy Roll” with tuna and salmon in a spicy sauce topped with lemon slices, and “Tuna on Earth”, tuna and avocado over tempura eggplant with ponzu sauce. The flavor of the fish was almost lost in the Playboy Roll, overwhelmed by raw jalapeno, red pepper, and citrus. The bright, tart flavors were bracing and it was fun to eat, but the subtleties of Japanese sushi were missing. The “Tuna on Earth” was much better balanced, modestly spicy with sweet overtones balanced by the slight bitterness of eggplant, the fish still had a distinct flavor.
We had enough room for one more item, so we decided to order the B.A.D. roll, figuring that since it was the namesake item it was probably one of the best. This concoction is made with lobster salad and avocado rolled in soy paper and fried, then cut and topped with sauce and masago, tiny tart caviar. The idea was good, but the balance was off – the sweet, sticky sauce was used too freely and overwhelmed everything else. We noticed that there was more sauce and less masago than in the picture on the menu, and we surmised that had ours been made that way we would have liked it more.
We left discussing what worked and what didn’t, and the consensus was that the problems here are related to too-exuberant use of sweet sauces – serving these on the side would allow diners to adjust things as they like. B.A.D. Sushi is moderately priced by sushi bar standards – our meal for two with a flask of sake ran about $60 – and it was an interesting chance to try a cultural fusion that is still evolving.
B.A.D. Sushi is at 357 Main Street in El Segundo. Open daily for lunch and dinner, parking in rear, wine, beer, and sake served. Phone 310-648-8671. ER
