First off, the food was good enough to very good. The service was terrible, so bad that I might spend the energy to call or write them. The space needs to be kept up better.
I’m in a bit of a quandry about my rating because I enjoyed my entree very much. But the other stuff detracted from the good food.

We did the $55 prix fixe.
Amuse: slices of duck with eggplant puree. Duck was good. Too much curry powder in the eggplant.
Next: Seared tuna with white peach. The tuna were fairly large slices, there were pieces of sinew in them, and it wasn’t that fresh, so you can’t cut clean slices. The white peach slices were excellent.
Next: Corn soup with deep fried rock shrimp. The soup had no body. Shrimp was good.
Next: our entrees. My friend got the Sea Bass, which I tasted. It was the most moist and tender sea bass I ever recall eating.
BUT, I opted for the black cod, the fish special for the night, and it was the winner!! The fish was beautifully moist and tender, and—drum roll— it came with a side of uni w/ angel hair. That made me so happy!!! The veg was also excellent: mushrooms (what’s the name, those gigantic white ones with lots of stem), asparagus, a bit of carrot. Very nice.
Dessert: I had the timbale of vanilla ice cream and fruit, under a caramel cage cover. Pretty. Ice cream was good. Fruit was ok: blueberres, raspberries, blackberries; but supermarket strawberries—bleh. My friend got the flourless chocolate cake w/ espresso ice cream. I’ve never had such a mushy choc flourless cake. bleh. The ice cream was good and the piece of almond brittle was good.

Weird: the description of the Chilean Sea Bass was slightly different in the three diff parts of the menu: main part, and the two prix fixe’s. Why didn’t they just copy and paste the text? Strange.

Sad: The dining areas were very charming. But then I noticed on one wall of one of the rooms that a whole very large section of paint was chipped off. Uh, do they not have any paint in that color left? Do they not know where to buy a paint brush?

Eeww: The hall leading to the restrooms is between two service areas. You’re walking over heavily soiled service carpet—a piece of carpeting backed with rubber. The ladies restroom door is filthy, and in desperate need of a simple new coat of paint.

Yuck: The rim of my soup bowl was not clean. It looked like they made a mess ladeling the soup into the bowl, and then had to wipe up the rim, but didn’t wipe it up well.

Terrible: The service. The French accented blond woman was our server. She was horrible. It took forever to get any water at all. I was very thirsty last night and drank my water pretty quickly, and had to repeatedly ask for more water. Her description of the black cod, the fish special of the night, was “black cod.” She threw our dessert menus down and ran off without a word. She randomly put my dessert plate down on one side of the table, and then when I kind of stopped and just looked at it, she then made some effort to put the plate in front of me. She’s so lucky she got a standard tip from us. What she really deserved was a nickel at the bottom of a glass of water.

The food was generally good, and for the prix fixe it was one of those good value higher end type meals. But everything else about Maison Akira felt like they’ve been around for awhile and instead of keeping in tip top shape, they’ve just let themselves go. Like they got lazy.

It’s amazing to me how sometimes the restaurants closest to you are the ones you take the longest to try. In the past few months, I’ve driven into Gardena, Hollywood, Downtown, Silver Lake, etc., etc. to check out new restaurants but having lived just 15 minutes away from Pasadena for the past 20+ years, it was only a few weeks ago that I finally had dinner at Maison Akira, a Japanese-French fusion restaurant.

What the heck was I waiting for all this time? So far I’ve been to over 100 new (new for me) restaurants just this year and I can tell you right now that Maison Akira is definitely one of my favorites.

The restaurant itself was quite a study in contrast. The front dining room was more simple in its look and design while the back dining rooms had rich colors and beautifully patterened drapes separating a couple of the rooms from each other.

Upon looking at the menu, the majority of my dining group opted for the pre-fixed menu, a five course meal for $50. What a great price and believe me, you got your money’s worth.

While I enjoyed every single bite from the amuse bouche all the way to dessert, the two highlights of my meal were actually Chef Akira Hirose’s signature dishes.

First there was the Grilled Miso Marinated Chilean Sea Bass in a Honey Lemon Jus on Roasted Provencal Vegetables. Wow! Can I say that again? Wow! That Chilean sea bass was the best I’ve ever had. The fish was delicate, moist and practically melted in my mouth. I can tell you right now that every Chilean Sea Bass I have in the future will definitely be compared to the one I had that night.

Then there was my dessert, which was called the Timbal Elysee “Laserre”. The presentation was so beautiful that I almost didn’t want to eat it. Almost. This dessert had pure vanilla bean ice cream in a cookie tuile with fresh berries, a caramel dome and was served with a raspberry and vanilla sauce.

According to our waitress, the best way to eat this dessert is to take your spoon and press down so that it breaks and that way, you’ll be able to eat some of the components at the same time.

This signature dessert had lots of textures. Between the “crunch” aspect of the cookie, the creaminess of the ice cream, the juicy berries and everything else, this is definitely one of the best desserts that I’ve ever had.

Overall, I had a really lovely experience at Maison Akira. The service was excellent. Our waitress was knowledgeable and of course, the food was delectable. I definitely am looking forward to a return visit sometime soon.

This is one of the best restaurants, if not the best, I have ever been to. The food here is AMAZING and they have excellent service and atmosphere.