Wonderful. All-around best high end sushi place. Highest quality fish and all other ingredients, down to the freshly ground black salt from Cyprus. And a big part of this great experience is Chef Katsu himself, who was our sushi chef for the evening. Chef Katsu is so warm, inviting, relaxed, down to earth, laughs a lot, and truly knows his stuff. Plus he clearly really loves his wife; so sweet. Speaking of which, he just closed Tama, and guess who snapped up the space—the Katsuya chain empire.
The sushi chef sets the tone, and so the feel and service are relaxed and friendly. And very professional, and everything and everyone operate at a very high level. They even replace your cup of tea whenever the tea starts to cool down. NIce.

The sake list is not too large, well-chosen, and with a thoughtful wide range of prices.

We asked chef Katsu to serve us whatever he wished; omakase.

1. A cold seaweed “soup”: a little tart, very refreshing.
2. Sashimi: halibut roe encased in halibut shaped into a ball; Spanish mackerel; Japanese red snapper; salmon eggs marinaded in soy sauce—that was excellent soy sauce, I usually don’t like salmon roe, but this was very good.
3. Spanish mackerel with arugula salad, with thin slices of a Japanese shallot, it sounded like chef Katsu said “milgra” but I couldn’t quite remember; it was wonderful, it has a flavor similar to yuzu.
4. Sashimi: soy marinated tuna, yellowtail belly, giant clam. The tuna was topped with a bit of something similar to capers, but way better. Wonderful. Served with two sauces: that special soy sauce, and a ponzu with chives.
5. Matsutake soup. Served with a wedge of lime, in a small teapot. Squeeze the lime in, and pour the liquid into the small teacup, then eat the matsutake, and if I recall correctly, there were thin slices of chicken too.
6. Albacore sushi, beautiful.
7. Sushi: saba sardine, mackerel, scallop with that Cyprus black sea salt ground directly onto the scallop by chef Katsu, blue fin tuna.
8. Sushi: dungeness crab tomalley topped with pieces of crab; salmon roe.
9. Toro handroll. Made with that special shiny, thicker, very crispy nori.
But wait—we wanted more.
10. Anago and Unagi sushi.
11. Uni sushi. Mmmm, beautiful uni. One topped with a bit of the ground black seasalt, the other topped with a bit of ground red salt.
12. Dessert: housemade pineapple pie, macerated fig (not sure what the liquid was), slices of fresh pineapple and watermelon.

The three of us shared a bottle of sake, I think it was around $70. $156 per person incl tax/tip, and worth every penny, and there was so much good humor and good conversation with chef Katsu, thrown in for free. :)
One of my friends had been having dinner here pretty regularly and was always served something different—great variety.

I had also gone for lunch just a few days before. Many $15 lunch specials, nabes for around $12. Incredible value.

And yes, I had been to the original Katsu on Hillhurst, opened in the 80’s, and chef Katsu’s other place on Sawtelle. But I don’t think I ever made it to his place on 3rd, and never did make it to Tama.