Otafuku: Izakaya without a Front Door

I try to take a picture of a facades so that you can get the first glance before stepping in. The front door of Otafuku is boarded up with instructions to go through the back. The back entrance is at the end of a small parking lot. We came an another eerie night, with a chilly evening breeze and light fog. The streets were quiet and dim. Inside Otafuku, it's another world.

You might think with all the fluorescent light and crowded tables that we were in the middle of Tokyo. We sat down at the bar area with a nice view of the kitchen and ordered a few items from the huge menu.


I was on a shishito pepper kick after the dish from CUT. This one was simple, what I get all the time with my Korean dinners. Simple stir-fried anchovies with spicy shishito peppers. Well-seasoned and carrying a hefty spice, this one was a good starter.


The fried chicken wasn't as good, with the limp crust and gangly meat.


The egg and eel soup was perfect, slightly sweet from the eel and hearty without being heavy. The hot soup was comforting to taste on a cold evening. Perilla added an herby, bitter counterpoint, but didn't overwhelm the pristine soup.


Cold chicken livers cooked in soy sauce and mirin were grainy and not so good at that temperature.



Otafuku is known for their soba noodles and these cold noodles didn't disappoint. We had the seiro soba which is, "quite thin white noodle made of a mixture of special white buckwheat flour, using only the heart of soba seeds". I usually get buckwheat soba, but these were slightly stringier and cleaner in flavor than the dark brown variety.



We ended the meal with a deep broth made from soba-ya or the starchy noodle broth where the soba is boiled. The broth was poured into the soba dipping sauce and drunk slowly, ameliorating any lasting chill from the cold outside. We were ready to leave warm and satisfied from a fine izakaya meal.

Otafuku Noodle House
16525 S Western Ave
Gardena, CA 90247
(310) 532-9348