Shojin – Los Angeles
Located in Culver City, Shojin is a Japanese restaurant with food made to be healthy for body, mind, and soul. How do they aim to achieve this? Their menu is vegan, macrobiotic, organic, natural, and most importantly gluten free. They do not use artificial ingredients, no white or brown sugar, no microwaves, and you won’t find any salt shakers on your table. While this concept obviously appeals to those that try to live life in a healthy manner, it simultaneously offers a restaurant safe for celiacs.
The restaurant is upscale and the prices reflect that. Then again, to eat gluten free often equals eating more expensive. We couldn’t dine-in and had to order for to-go, so please ignore the lack of aesthetics of the photos. You can order online for pick up, but we were at the restaurant itself so sat down to have a look at the menu. Sushi is the main dish on it and they certainly have much to choose from. They also offer ramen, salads, and desserts. We ended up ordering four different dishes.
We were recommended the Saturday Night Fever sushi rolls ($20,00) made from slightly torched “crab” and spicy mayo on an avocado wrapped spicy tofu and avocado roll. Topped with crispy potato and served with a spicy dynamite sauce. You could really taste the ‘torching’ of the “crab” and the crispy potatoes were delicious.
We also tried the Green Forest ($18,00) which was an avocado wrapped asparagus carrot roll. This was topped with tempura broccoli and yuzu-pepper cream. On the side it had a chia yuzu ponzu sauce to dip the sushi in. This was a heavier dish because it had both the deep-fried broccoli as well as a creamy sauce. Both sushi dishes were certainly unique in comparison to more common versions of sushi.
Our non-sushi choices were a kale and carrot sautéed or stir-fry dish (sadly I can’t recall the name or further ingredients of the dish) and the Ramen Revolution ($28,00) consisting of miso broth, brown rice noodles, tofu “chashu”, kogashi black garlic oil, chili oil, kale, tempura flakes, and ground “beef” made with mushroom and gobo. The vegetable dish was more of a side and not necessarily memorable while I wished the ramen had much more broth to go with it.
We had no other choice at the time, but my suggestion would be to go for the full experience and eat at the restaurant itself. That is what I would do next time.
The Ramen Revolution with a vegan egg!
Kale and carrot sautéed or stir-fry dish.
Saturday Night Fever sushi rolls.
Green Forest with yuzu sauce!