Azay, 226 E 1st St, Los Angeles (Little Tokyo), CA 90012
Azay is a popular casual Japanese-French café that uses high quality ingredients and serves a mix of Japanese and French dishes. The Japanese chef trained in France and worked at Hotel Nikko under Joël Robuchon. He and his wife owned Maison Akira in Pasadena, which closed in 2019.
There is a breakfast/lunch menu and a dinner menu. The breakfast/lunch menu includes Japanese breakfast, daily bento (protein changes), fish of the day, udon, eel bowl, etc. The portions were larger than I expected.
Kakuni omurice ($18): braised pork belly, omelette, rice, ketchup, onion. The omelette is folded on top of a mound of rice. That rice is cooked with onions, butter, and ketchup. It was very moist and they also included small pieces of braised pork belly in the rice. The omelette was silky and tender. They put pork belly strips on top and drizzled it with ketchup. The pork belly was so good – braised in some type of sweetened soy-based sauce. Meltingly tender. It came with a large side salad of mixed greens, radish, tomatoes, and golden raisins. I hate raisins but these were different – moist, plump, and not quite as sweet.
Zenzai ($7): mochi, red bean soup, kombu. It was sweeter than I expected but that’s why I normally don’t order it. It wasn’t fully broken down. I could see the beans but they were soft. The mochi was nice and chewy.
They have indoor and outdoor seating. The interior is cute and homey. When you show up, sign in and they’ll call your name. They also validate parking but you have to park in the right parking lot.
4 out of 5 stars
By Lolia S.
