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If you’re in the mood for a casual, relatively affordable night of sushi, Omakase By Osen might be a place you’d initially skip over. After all, “omakase” is literally in its name, a word that conjures up visions of an hours-long meal and several hundred dollars from your bank account. But while this Silver Lake does indeed offer an omakase—$180 per person at the sushi bar, $150 at a table—there’s more here than meets the eye. That’s because Omakase By Osen is, in fact, a low-key neighborhood sushi spot in disguise. And a pretty solid one at that.
If you’ve eaten much Japanese food on the Eastside, the name Osen might sound familiar. That’s because the chef of Omakase By Osen also runs Izakaya Osen, a consistently crowded spot on Sunset that's been a Silver Lake mainstay for years. While Izakaya Osen serves an array of small plates, meat skewers, and sushi, Omakase By Osen focuses exclusively on the latter. The space is warm and welcoming: There’s a long wooden bar against the kitchen where the omakase goes down, a row of cozy tables with bench seating, and a tiny front room with floor-to-ceiling windows that offer excellent people-watching along Sunset. The servers are warm and attentive, happy to pour more sake at a moment’s notice and constantly check in to make sure you like the food.
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
The menu at Omakase By Osen is big, with sections for starters, sushi, and "cold signature plates." Your eyes will likely be drawn to the more decadent dishes first: Caviar-topped toro appetizers, sashimi plates covered in truffle, and buttery baked king crab hand rolls. These are all delicious to have on your table, but if your meal is dominated by them, it can quickly get expensive—not ideal if it’s a random Tuesday night and you’re kind of wearing pajamas. Instead, you’re better off focusing on the more straightforward items—such as the daily nigiri and “classic” handrolls—all of which fall under $10 and are among the best things on the menu anyway. From there, you can add on a few of the decadent, splurgy dishes (the miso crab salmon is a clear winner) and call it a day.
You might also be curious about the sushi bar omakase. The $180 per person price is high-end, but considering some omakase meals in LA go for more than double that price these days, it could be worse. At Osen, you’ll start with around seven small plates, from clam miso soup to monkfish with seaweed salad to start, then a full sashimi platter, followed by nine pieces of nigiri and a dessert. It’s a good amount of food, but for that price, you’d expect every dish to be executed perfectly and that’s not the case here. The steamed egg custard is a bit runny, the wagyu beef arrives at room temperature, and the toro tartare doesn’t taste like much of anything. Plus, all of these dishes are available on the regular menu anyway, so it’s not like you’re getting special treatment from the chef. You’re much better off snagging a table and ordering off the regular menu instead. You might even see us there doing the same—just don’t judge us if we’re sort of wearing pajamas.
Food Rundown
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
Nigiri
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
Miso Crab Salmon
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
HandRolls
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
Wagyu Beef With Ameabi
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
Matcha Mochi Cake