Santa Monica's Japantown: Sawtelle District

a walking tour of santa monica's sautel japan town the second biggest japan town in los angeles i'm chris this is yellow productions let's check it out so turn the camera around so that you can see forward this area that we'll be exploring today in santa monica is along sawtell boulevard that's where it gets the name sawtel japan town it's about four blocks of this street that has a ton of japanese restaurants japanese nurseries and so if you're looking for japanese food or japanese bonsai trees this is the place to go we're going to be crisscrossing the streets there's a lot of japanese restaurants here here on the left menya tigre they specialize in curry noodles so if you wanted to get some ramen with a curry soup base that's the place to get it where i started the video over there on the right there's an outpost of marugame udon really delicious flower noodles uh you kind of like cafeteria style you walk down uh pretty inexpensive for udon pretty quick so if you're looking for some place that's quick that's a good place to check it out here on the left we have killer noodle and killer noodle specializes in spicy noodles you can see they're big pictures of them right here and right up there they also have chicken ramen if you don't want it spicy and you can get these downtown style tokyo style with soup or without soup these noodles are pretty good if you like them spicy now you might be wondering chris why is nobody eating at this place well i'm here at about 10 30 a.m on a friday right before they've really opened for customers because i figure it's actually better to show you around when i'm not running into a lot of people so in about an hour this place is going to be pretty busy and pretty hopping when they all open for lunch here on the left is sujita la probably is the restaurant that put this neighborhood on the map as a japan town they specialize in ramen and they've got a few locations this particular location has a really garlicky ramen and it's got the these plants on the outside so you can't miss it their original location for sujita is just across the street kitty corner we will check that out in just a second but if you're looking for ramen and you can only eat ramen in one place in this neighborhood then i would definitely check out sugita just be prepared for long waits okay we're going to go ahead and criss-cross the street to the other side you know in any good japan town you'll have a lot of noodle options here we have kaz the soba place which specializes in soba and soba is a buckwheat style noodle and so you can get those right here from kaz now it's not all just japanese food uh here on the right is a place called dan or don for noodles that specializes in modern chinese there's a sushi stop for some sushi nonga vietnamese cafe but then as i said the original tsujita is right here so if there's one restaurant that is the most famous in sautel's japan town it is tsujita and let's take a look at their menu right here they are not known for ramen but they are particularly known for sukhaman and sukhamin are ramen noodles that are served separate from the soup the broth is thicker and then you pick the noodles up and you dip them in there so definitely check out the sukaymin from sujita these restaurants have added a lot of extra outdoor seating due to the pandemic so this may or may not be here when you come here depending upon when you're watching this video now this neighborhood originally was called uh little osaka because los angeles most famous japan town is little tokyo in downtown los angeles and so this was named after osaka the second biggest city in japan though little osaka i think is the name that maybe we still refer to it as but officially it's now called sawtel japan town being that it's on sautel as the street now there's this little plaza that we're walking through here that has a lot of different uh restaurants and shops ones we enjoy is called tasty noodle house this is not japanese food it is shanghai cuisine uh they have uh xiaolongbao but in particular they have these grilled pork buns which are really good if you like chinese dumplings then check out tasty noodle house here we have a japanese tepan dining so this is the kind of place where they'll grill things up in front of you and you can get your sapporo beer tower here 23. for 84 ounces of beers and they all specialize in okonomiyaki which are japanese style pancakes and they have a whole bunch of different types of okonomiyaki that you can see right here now with the pandemic as i mentioned most these places have added some outdoor seeding so most of these places in addition to doing some amount of dining in currently are also doing dining out we've got a ramen restaurant right here looks like the staff is eating before the customers descend upon them and let's go ahead and walk across the street there's this street has a lot of like little plazas in it and so we're gonna go ahead and check into one of these uh first plazas this plaza does have a name on it it's hard to see but it has the big sign for tinkertory fried chicken and sometimes when i cross the street i feel like i'm playing frogger uh in there there's a daiso japan daiso is japan's like 100 yen store or 99 store all the items in there in the u.s are like about a dollar fifty so if you're looking for some neat japanese trinkets daiso is a store you should definitely check out it is one of uh our favorites between osigrill and i if we ever need just like random stuff that you might buy at target uh cool store always clean aisles candy snacks home goods and everything in there is much better than you would get at a typical 99 cent store coming up in the corner here we can see a revolving sushi restaurant and we can see the sushi is revolving i am stuck going this way well we'll just walk around this but this is korra revolving sushi bar and if we look in the window we can see the sushi go arounds that are going around there what i like about this place is they've got these touch screen menus that you can see up there so you can also order sushi that gets fresh made to you and like comes on a conveyor belt out to your table all right i'm stuck in this little corner now so we will go around i'm clearly not the only person that does that next to kura sushi is a beard papa beard papa sells japanese cream puffs i really like beard papa they've opened in a lot of places in la and then they've closed here's a picture kind of of what their cream puffs looks like this one in particular has boba in it they don't all have boba but if we look inside you can see the kind of few different flavors of cream puffs they've got matcha ones and they bake the cream puffs in the store and then they fill them with the cream as you order it so they're not soggy or they're not gross on the left here is nagia najiya is a small japanese supermarket uh there's a few japanese supermarket chains in los angeles najib is kind of one of the uh cutest or smallest ones and if we go out this way then that's basically what's on the bottom floor of this plaza up on the second floor there's a karaoke place there's a day spa so if you're looking to do some singing then you can check it out up there when those are open all right continuing down santel across the street there's another one of these plazas this one's called olympic connection olympic connection is under construction but you can see there's a yakitori place there's a shave ice place and there's a place called honey me for some actually korean style soft serve ice cream that has a honeycomb in the ice cream and there was a whole bunch more japanese stuff in this plaza i'm looking forward to seeing the rest of it once it reopens there's also some big construction in the back a huge building they're building so i'll be intrigued to see what's in there this is olympic boulevard one of the main streets in santa monica you can basically take olympic uh you know all the way down towards the santa monica pier and we're going to go ahead and cross this street for the final block of sautel's japan town that we will explore there's a big shopping center here that has michael's marshall's starbucks those aren't really japanese but there's some cool asian things right on the street front where you can see the tents set up on the right some interesting artwork here on this uh electric box with like a like a lemon on it [Music] and so the first one we'll see here is matcha village this is a shop that specializes in matcha tea drinks japanese green tea and not just in tea but that they also have matcha in desserts so you can get matcha cake matcha cheesecake and then you can get yes all sorts of matcha drinks but i think one of the best things places like this are often the matcha ice cream so you can get matcha ice cream cones or you can get one that's a charcoal sea salt cone that looks like one of their most unique things there's a panda express next to panda express there's a sun right tea studio taiwanese boba style tea shop looks like they're specializing in mango drinks at this point there's a another ramen shop here dai kokoya this is uh um another really pretty good ramen place their original locations in little tokyo and they've opened up another location here in sautel's japan town there's a place called sushi stop another sushi restaurant and the final place that i want to show you just down here it's not japanese but it's really good there's a location of hui laushan that opened just recently hui laushan is a hong kong style dessert restaurant that specializes in mango desserts and if we look in the shop it's dark because they don't open until one o'clock but they have these handmade mango desserts jumbo mango chewy balls mango crystal jellies mango drinks i really love this place so if you come to sautel japan town and you are looking for some dessert definitely check out hui lao shan well if you enjoyed this video and you want to see some more of my walking tours you can click up here for my whole walking tour playlist including videos of the santa monica pier and the venice beach boardwalk to attractions that are really nearby as usual i won't say goodbye because i'll see you in one of these videos

Channel: Yellow Productions

Views: 14,012

Keywords: Yellow Productions, little osaka, santa monica japan town, santa monica japantown, los angeles japan town, los angeles japantown, little osaka los angeles, little osaka santa monica, los angeles little osaka, santa monica little osaka, sawtelle, sawtelle blvd, tsujita, sawtelle japantown

Id: 2YaOW6QVSc4

Length: 12min 50sec (770 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2021