Tamaen

Torrance/Gardena/Lomita has one of the largest groupings of great food be it Hawaiian, Japanese or Korean. I heard that sometime soon, Torrance will have the largest population of Japanese nationals in the Nation. One benefit of this stat is good food.

My friends Asami, Seth and Jeff, are local visual artists and are also in a rock band with me called "BEV". We all love to eat and for my birthday recently, they took me to a place called Tamaen, 1935 Pacific Coast Highway Lomita CA 90717, 310-326-0829, www.tamaen.com



The draft beer comes in very frosty mugs and slushes a bit, very delicious. The BBQ comes in plates and you cook it in front of you on the table. It's a great party like dining experience. The meat is excellent. We had prime rib, Kobe beef (made in the USA), tongue, fresh vegetables and seafood. It's a very social way of eating dinner and that makes for a richer eating experience.

We also drank cold sake. I love good quality cold sake, preferably on the dry side. We also sampled a ginseng liquor that Asami said was an aphrodisiac. Anyway, all this flavors the food we ate, which was delicious. The avarage BBQ dish is about $18.00.

They also have a pineapple sherbet that was very delicious and a banana split that was so-so but we ordered two and Seth and I had an eating contest. That was fun. Seth won. We had a great time.