Restaurant - Ryo Zan Paku

Ryo Zan Paku
2589 Pacific Coast Hwy
Torrance, CA 90505
(310) 530-8720

A recent visit to the Torrance area a dozen or so miles south of Los Angeles put me face to face with some of the newer Japanese Izakaya establishments set up in the area. Longtime establishments such as Iccho and Musha, it seems, no longer enjoy their oligopoly over the izakaya-starved Japanese businesspeople that wade through the South Bay.

One such location is Ryo Zan Paku, a retro-style izakaya that boasts a decor similar to the kind of Japanese bar that Japanese businessmen would escape to for a few beers after a long day at work. As it turns out, it's a US location of an izakaya chain that originates from Japan.

The food was probably a hair below the standard as far as what Japanese businessmen would find acceptable. Not that anything was particularly bad; the place boasts a menu with a wide variety of assorted sushi rolls, yakitori sticks, rice dishes and fried dishes. Then again, everything was sort of not good. If a Japanese businessman were to eat these dishes and you asked him how he felt, he wouldn't say it was bad, but he would look at you apologetically, narrow his eyes a little bit and subtly shake his head.

Hiyayakko (cold tofu)
Did they try to dress it up too much? I personally am not a fan of tofu on ice.

Tamago yaki (eggs cooked like a layered omelette)
The big slices are usually how izakaya showcase their tamago when they make it themselves; it is actually difficult to cook well, and the strangely lukewarm nature of the tamago made it clear to me that they don't make their own. And it really doesn't taste as good when you have to eat a huge chunk of it, like in this picture.

Calamari salad
No, those aren't chicken strips. They have small pieces of squid inside, surrounded by lots of fried batter. Lots and lots of it.

By the way, if you notice that the food is decorated by either parsley or sprouts, that's because all of their dishes come out like so. Except for their crab cream croquettes, I suppose (which were actually somewhat decent).

The waitress at our table was energetic and was helpful in helping us select our order. I would imagine service would get rather sparse during busy hours, but fortunately Sunday night did not seem to be one of their busier nights. I was not too sure why she recommended we get some American-style sushi rolls when we said we wanted to order a rice dish or two. At $2.00 to $2.50 per pop, one of their onigiri (rice balls) would have sufficed, but we paid three to four times that amount for a salty clump of rice and assorted vegetables. And there was very little rice in those sushi rolls.

Unfortunately the retro music playlist is analogous to an entourage of some of the sadder oldies tunes that our grandmothers probably cried to, such as "Nature Boy" by Nat King Cole or "In The Ghetto" by Elvis Presley. There were few songs that were similar in mood to Frank Sinatra's livelier tunes, making the dark, lonesome stool at the edge of the bar counter an appealing place to drown one's sorrows in.

The tab came out to $26 per person, which seemed a bit pricey considering we didn't have a single drop of alcohol between the five of us. If I was a Japanese businessman, I would only come here if my wife had left me for the young college student next door, since the dim lighting, depressing music, and dishes that will leave you wanting something just a little better forms a solid foundation for any depressed Japanese businessman's Shangri-La.

It's the kind of place you would go to with a crestfallen sigh, when your options really have run dry and want to go to a place that you know won't be crowded. It looks nice, the service is friendly, but the food isn't that great.