Kaela's Birthday Dinner & Mark's First Attempt at Being a Food Blogger

It was Kaela's birthday yesterday and luckily my Dad was willing to watch Bennett so we could venture out for dinner. Kaela told me that she wanted to go to some place new so I scoured the interweb to find something that sounded yummy. I decided on Musha, a Japanese fusion restaurant in Santa Monica, and it was a great choice!


Musha is an izakaya - technically an izakaya is a Japanese pub that also serves food, but in LA LA Land it basically means Japanese tapas. The restaurant is pretty small and the tables are certainly cozy - not so much cozy with the person you're there with but more cozy with whomever happens to be at the table next to you! At one point Kaela accidentally knocked one of her chopsticks off of the table and it ended up in the shopping bag of the person next to us! Oops. With such an intimate setting one would hope that you'd at least have nice and friendly people sitting next to you rather than the table that we had on the other side of us. One of the guys used the word "douche" so much that I'm convinced it was 1 of only 8 words that he knew . . . 2 of the others being the "f" word and the alternate word for poop, naturally. . . . The real negative though was the fact that the restaurant was pretty loud and Kaela and I had to practically shout to hear one another. So if you go, make sure you bring your best outside voice or perhaps a megaphone.


On to the food . . .

Since Musha is a tapas style restaurant Kaela and I ordered 5 plates. We started with the Komatsuna Salad. Komatsuna is a Japanese leaf vegetable and is also known as Japanese mustard spinach. The salad had komatsuna, cherry tomatoes, sliced portabella mushrooms, and pink peppercorns in a soy sauce dressing. The salad was amazing! The komatsuna was crisp and had a pleasant mustardy flavor which complemented the soy sauce dressing beautifully. The pink peppercorns though stole the show. They were softened a little by the dressing and added such a wonderful spice to the salad. It definitely was Kaela's favorite dish of the night! We gave it a solid A.

(No picture of the salad, sorry. In fact, we forgot our camera and so all of these photos are courtesy of yelp)

Next up was the M.F.C. No that doesn't stand for Motha Freakin Chicken, it stands for Musha Fried Chicken. The chicken (dark meat) was marinated in soy sauce, sake, ginger, and garlic then breaded with cornstarch and deep fried. It was served with 2 different kinds of grated daikon, a ponzu sauce, and a lemon wedge. The chicken was nice and tender and the breading was light. The ponzu sauce was good but overall the dish lacked any sort of pizazz. It was good but not overly memorable. Kaela said that she probably wouldn't order it again. We gave it a C.


Next was the spicy tuna dip. We had actually ordered this first but it came third because the sashimi chef was up at the sushi bar chopping up the ahi like a mad man. We didn't go and watch him but I'm sure he was double chopping up a storm! The tuna was excellent and fresh and the "secret spicy sauce" was superb! I'm not gonna lie, when the waitress brought the dish out my first thought was, "we didn't order the cat food", but I am profoundly grateful that my stomach overtook my eyes because my taste buds were the blissful benefactor! The spice was just the right amount and the rice crackers were basically an unsweetened rice cake. We gave it an A+. It was so good in fact that after the second bite Kaela said, "I want to swim in a vat of this and have the rice crackers for flotation devices!" I love her!


Our 4th dish was the Char-han. My Japanese is a little non-existant (that's not true, Kaela and I discussed that we knew a little Japanese - "Domo arigato Mr. Roboto") but I'm pretty sure Char-han means fried rice. Musha's Char-han is a hot and spicy "typhoon" fried rice, made with ground pork, thai chili, bamboo shoots, ginger, garlic & tokyo leek, then mixed with stir-fried egg & brown rice. It is finished with a touch of fish sauce and topped with cilantro & red ginger. The ground pork was full of flavor but somehow the dish came across a little bland until we mixed in the red ginger. It became a whole new dish! The red ginger gave the rice such a wonderful flavor profile - there is no way anyone should eat the rice without it! We gave it a C without the ginger and a B with.


Our final dish was a surprise for Kaela. I had seen how they prepare it and was excited for the show. I ordered the cheese rissoto. Now I know what you're thinking, "Rissoto? I thought you said this was Japanese food?" Well this was a Japanese take on a classic rissoto and no offense to the Italians but man this was some mighty fine rissoto! It is made from Japanese grain brown rice cooked in chicken broth and then pan fried with chopped prosciutto, onion, and a touch of soy milk. But the coolest part is that it is served table side in a massive bowl of whole cheese and the server grates some of the cheese off of the bowl and into the rissoto. It was a cool presentation and all of the tables around us were checking it out too. The rissoto itself was fantastic. With all of those ingredients one might think that it would be super salty but Kaela and I were impressed with the delicate balance that it had. The prosciutto was excellent and, well, it was cheese-a-rific! Basically it was heaven in a giant cheese bowl. We gave it an A.


Overall, our trip to Musha was an epic success! Kaela said it was her best birthday dinner ever, which was music to my ears! Apart from the questionable gentlemen to our left and the lack luster M.F.C., Musha gets a big thumbs up; and if you live in the LA area or are going to be visiting, you should definitely check it out!