Setting Sail on a Rockin’ Sea of Sushi

It takes muscle to open Furusato’s heavy, if beautiful, bamboo-pattern door. It’s worth the trouble, though.

Inside, bamboo fencing contributes to the woodsy, golden look of the place. Orders of sushi and sashimi sail forth on fanciful wooden boats. The slatted wood chair backs are so high they give the privacy of booths.

Located near Koreatown, Furusato is aimed at a Korean clientele. The menus are in English and Korean, not Japanese. Korean beer and soju, a colorless spirit derived from sweet potatoes, are as likely to accompany a meal as sake. There’s a long list of sushi choices and you can get teriyaki and tempura, but there are also fiery Korean soups, and spicy kimchi pickles come with everything.

I’ve run into a communication problem here. When I ordered an appetizer portion of sashimi, I received a full order (at a substantially higher price). And when I specified two appetizers, I got two orders . . . of the first appetizer I mentioned, fresh sea urchin with rice. Although it’s listed on the menu at $4.95, you automatically get a double order at $7.95. (They explain that the restaurant can’t make a single portion.)

I didn’t mind, because this is an extraordinary dish. The sea urchin is handsomely presented on the half shell, so to speak, its hollows filled with briny sea urchin flesh covered with sticky rice scented almost imperceptibly with sesame oil. Flecks of dried seaweed are scattered over the rice, and crunchy, pretty-looking fish roe.

By the way, I did get the other appetizer I ordered, fried beef gyoza (dumplings). They were hot and crisp--and just a single order. Another quite wonderful appetizer is the curiously misspelled “dynimite,” an intensely rich mixture of diced fish, diced carrots and avocados in cream sauce, served in a foil-lined sea shell.

Service is scattered. The first night, the appetizers didn’t arrive until after the main dishes. The solution seemed obvious: Don’t order the entrees until the appetizers are finished. So I tried that, only to get the miso soup that goes with dinner along with the appetizers.

Oh, well. The waitresses are charming, and who am I to complain? They speak far more English than I speak Korean. You just have to relax and take things as they come here.

Looking for something beyond the usual tempura and teriyaki, I tried freshwater eels broiled in a brown glaze, and they were tender and sweet. Like all main dishes, they were presented on metal plates on wooden holders.

Rice gruel with abalone sounded pretty dull, except that abalone is so expensive it has no business being dull--and it wasn’t. “Gruel” is an inadequate word for this soupy rice subtly seasoned with sesame and combined with finely chopped abalone and tiny bits of carrot. Egg white flecks the mixture, as in Chinese egg drop soup, and the yolk nestles in the bottom of the bowl (a beautiful one, glazed in subtle colors), presumably poached by the hot gruel.

Teriyaki is just OK here; the pork cutlet--breaded pork topped with tonkatsu sauce--is rather ordinary. But assorted hot fish soup is marvelous, if you can take the heat. Fiery red with chile, the soup comes in a heavy black stone bowl that keeps the temperature steamy hot. The way to deal with this double blast of heat is to lift out the components and eat them with the bowl of rice that comes on the side. The soup involves not just fish but clams, tofu, daikon, zucchini and watercress.

Oh, yes--it includes little clumps of (bland and inoffensive) fish intestine. If you like it, you can get a lot more by ordering fish intestine soup.

The assorted side dishes that come with a Korean meal are here too, although in less variety. Usually there’s bright yellow pickled daikon, but the other offerings change. One night, the waitress set out two kinds of kimchi and dark, chewy, sticky-sweet beans. The next time, we were given very fresh-tasting pickled cucumbers and marinated soy bean sprouts.

On one visit we were surprised with complimentary nibbles on top of appetizers and side dishes. They were boiled fresh soy beans in their pods, little salty shrimp in the shell and Western-style macaroni salad. Dessert is fresh orange wedges.

Furusato is not expensive, unless you run up a big sushi bill. Appetizers are as low as $4.95, and dinners start at $10.95. This is a good place for culinary adventuring.

BE THERE

Furusato, 3881 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 380-0400. Lunch and dinner 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday-Saturday; closed Sunday. Full bar. Street parking or validated parking in lot behind restaurant. American Express, MasterCard and Visa. Dinner for two, food only, $22 to $40.

What to get: Sea urchin with rice, gyoza, dynimite, assorted hot fish soup, rice gruel with abalone, broiled fresh-water eels.