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Poolside dining in Los Angeles is one of the great joys of living here. But the recently reopened SushiSamba in West Hollywood is taking that concept a step further: The rooftop restaurant seats diners inside an empty pool.
The unusual choice is in keeping with the maximalist approach that made SushiSamba into one of the iconic dining franchises of the early aughts. Now, it’s bringing its Japanese-Peruvian-Brazilian cuisine to 11,000-square-feet-space at 639 N La Peer Drive, where the vibe is decidedly tropical even before you step down the concrete steps into what was once intended to be an athletic club’s pool.
I never made it to the NYC SushiSamba during its heyday, though other Sex and the City fans and I will forever have the space enshrined in our hearts as the location for Samantha Jones' iconic, "Dirty martini? Dirty bastard" drink toss. So while I was familiar with the idea of SushiSamba, I had no real connection to it.
This is sushi, yes, but it's sushi with the kind of flamboyant personality that feels right at home in L.A.
That started to change—albeit with some trepidation—once I was ensconced at a table for two and the menus arrived with a certain heft. This is sushi, yes, but it's sushi with the kind of flamboyant personality that feels right at home in L.A. The food menu reads like a passport stamped in three continents: tiraditos and ceviches alongside robata-grilled skewers and bone-in ribeyes.
Most notably, the menu includes the Samba L.A. roll, a maximalist offering featuring wagyu and soft-shell crab for the protein-maxxers out there. The whole thing is tasty if not entirely melded, and ultimately a more complicated bite (both literally and gastronomically) than is strictly necessary.
That's one of the main concerns with a menu like this one. I've never been a "My potatoes can’t touch my peas" kind of eater, but I am a purist in the sense that, when one has access to West Coast sushi, I don’t see much payoff in mucking around in an effort to "improve" it. Then again, people love over-the-top custom rolls, so that's certainly not a disqualifier.
For purists like myself, SushiSamba offers options like the breathtakingly plated sashimi platter (truly a work of art) as well as the usual, classic rolls. Elsewhere, plates like the kari kari, featuring melt-in-your-mouth spicy tuna and crispy rice, or the wagyu gyoza with kabocha squash puree, prove that fusion can equal a sum greater than its parts, rather than a slew of additive flavors that cancel one another out. (Also, how the hell did the kitchen cook beef to a perfect medium rare in a dumpling?!) And then there are the large plates, including a black cod simply and impeccably dressed with a miso pickled-ginger glaze that brings out the fish's buttery flavor.
The cocktails range from chic riffs on classics like a Sakura Negroni with Suntory Roku gin to a margarita featuring a dash of green Tabasco, along with a lychee cooler that manages to balance out the fruit’s sweetness for something satisfyingly blended. Not to mention one of the largest Japanese whisky collections in the city, all available for sipping under the stars on any given night.
Does it all cohere? Not entirely. Dessert is fascinating (and eminently photographable) but a bit less coherent than the dinner menu. The honey butter toast tastes like a fabulous bowl of Golden Grahams cereal, but the accompanying shio koji ice cream is overwhelmingly umami-forward. And the Welcome to the Rainforest looks like a perfectly expected science fair diorama of dinosaur eggs, but it is, ultimately, ice cream in a hard shell—even on a bed of almond-chocolate “soil.”
But it’s hard to fault any restaurant that has gone to so much trouble to curate a vibe this breezy. Oh, did dessert take a while to arrive, so we had to sit at a table in a drained pool on a beautiful L.A. evening? Life could be worse, and SushiSamba gets a lot more right than it does wrong. Make it your next go-to for out-of-town guests or just a killing-time cocktail before a night out. For a restaurant new to the city, it’s the most Los Angeles spot happening right now. I may not have gotten to throw a dirty marini in anyone's face, but it's a testament to the food that I left without even wanting to.
SushiSamba is open Sunday–Wednesday from 5pm to midnight and Thursday–Saturday from 5pm to 1am, with brunch on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:30am to 4pm.
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