Aburiya Raku

Customer service: ⁵⁄₅
Quality of food: ⁵⁄₅
Price: 50−80/per
Not cheap but one of the best Japanese restaurant in town.
Everything was good nothing is so so EVERYTHING IS GOOD!!!

amber jacka sashimi platter
foie gras chawanmushi
uni + soft boiled egg + ikura
asajime juicy fried chicken
kobe beef tendon
agedashi tofu
onigiri
fluffy cheese cake
They were all very delicious. a lot of attention to detail, flavors and display.
Service is great too.
Choose your weapon (sake glass).

This place is to die for!!! I can’t wait to come back. First, make room for dessert and get the cheesecake. It is AMAZING. It’s like eating angels and clouds! We also got the crème brûlée but it was just fine. We ordered the secret menu item — the kamameshi which was really good. Order it FIRST as it takes a long time to cook and it comes last basically. It comes with samon roe eggs which we get on the side because I’m deathly allergic. I also got the housemade tofu, but was not very impressed with it; it was too firm for my liking. Most house made tofu is very soft which is part of the appeal. Ask to see the specials board too as our waitress forgot. The service here is really good. We ordered some similar skewers and they pointed out since they were so similar to just get one stick and share it so as to not overload on too similar food. Pass on the cold green tea soba noodles with egg, there are better dishes to enjoy. The cucumber seaweed salad we got was really good, so get that. The Kobe filet stone steak comes out on flaming stone. It only looks like about 8 oz of steak which is something we want to try if it is on the specials board. We also enjoyed the scallops. We enjoyed a lot of the skewers too and got various veggie, chicken, beef, pork, and seafood ones. They source really good meat that we were like OH MY GOD after eating them. That is their competitive edge along with their delicious sauces on the skewers. Everything tastes different and unlike other robata places. The ohitashi that day was really good too, a cold spinach dish. Each table also has some neat sauces/​salts. Be prepared to spend about $ 100/​person without drinks. I spent about $ 180 total (with tip in that $ 180) for 2 of us. I also need to go to the Vegas restaurant and dessert place one day. It looks mouth-​watering and Instagram-​worthy. This place is so good I only want to come once or twice a year to make sure it stays special and I don’t get tired of it. My entire list of my top fave restaurants in LA are: Meals by Genet, Bestia, Republique, Charcoal, Petit Trois, Bouchon, Melisse, Providence, Aburiya Raku, n/​naka, Salt’s Cure, Guerilla Tacos, Jon & Vinny’s, Gus’s BBQ, The Bazaar, (and dish creative in Palm Springs).

I too have gone to the one in Vegas and their new West Hollywood location is just as amazing. I did not seem to have the same issues as others have expressed — I had reservations and was seated promptly and didn’t have to wait at all, food all came out pretty fast and there was no huge lag of time in between dishes, and waiters were all attentive and friendly.
It is a bit pricey, but if you don’t order a lot of the market priced items then I feel the price is reasonable. It was about $ 60/​pp when we went and we only ordered only one of their special items. I mainly enjoy the robata (grilled) items, their house-​made tofu, and a few of their hot dishes here. I can’t comment on the cooked fish and sashimi.
Here are my favorite dishes:
Oyaji Tofu — I would come here just for their tofu!
Buttered Scallop — the sauce is so rich and tasty with the scallops
Pork Cheek — it reminds me of crispy pork belly; just melts in your mouth
Iberico Pork (one of their specials of the night) — it was similar to the pork cheek :)
Fluffy Cheesecake — it really tastes as it name says! It’s super light and fluffy and not too sweet, but it comes with a raspberry sauce and matcha powder if you want to add more flavor
Here are some others that are worth trying:
Juicy Deep Fried Chicken
Tsukune Grilled Ground Asajime Chicken
Agedashi Tofu
Asajime Chicken Teba Wing
Enoki mushroom with bacon
I wasn’t impressed with the beef with garlic slice – it was good but wasn’t memorable. My husband enjoyed it though, and preferred it over the deep fried chicken.
Parking: There is valet or street parking

I knew I was in for a treat hearing the sound of the Binchotan being tested by the chef before it was put into the hibachi, Only the best Binchotan makes that high pitch sound. Raku’s Wabi Sabi Japanese pottery is eye candy. You can not go wrong when this much attention is put into a dish. I would be a regular if I lived closer.

Service: Went late at night @ around 11. We were one of two parties at the restaurant so it was quiet and the staff were exceptionally attentive. Plates and things were cleared at the exact moment they began getting in the way. Waters were refilled at the right time, tea was ever flowing. Presentation was wonderful. Each dish had its own complementing bowls and things that added to the character. Ex: poached egg and uni was a cold dish that arrived in glass, an earthy rice ball with bonito soup was served in a clay bowl with wooden spoons, chopstick rests were pieces of charcoal unique to each diner, etc. The attention to detail was up to par with some of the finer establishments in Japan itself. Staff have a Japanese accent, so make sure to pay attention.
Food: Sat at the bar for a view of the magic and were treated to some Okinawa Seaweed starters. (How do they get it so fresh?) Poached egg and uni: get this! Its a kaleidoscope of ingredients that ends up in a delightful soup with such a rich and delicate flavor. Their agedashi tofu is so soft on the inside yet still crunchy on the outside. The flavor is amazing. The enriki mushrooms come seasoned in green tea salt and was actually one of my favorites because it was so simple yet naturally meaty and delicious.
It’s pricey, but if you’re looking for an occasional splurge, Raku’s your place.

in a nutshell, really great food… unfortunately super expensive.
went here with a friend late one night. we had a crap ton of food and a bottle of sake. our bill was $ 600+ dollars. my friend looked at me and said, «why is it always so expensive when i go out with you?»
fortunately, he owns a law firm and can afford a $ 600 dinner for two. unfortunately, i don’t feel like i got a $ 600 dinner. for $ 600 i’d rather go to Cut and have wagyu steak, an exorbitantly overpriced Bordeaux and a server who isn’t an actor on the side. this place is just too casual to warrant shelling out that type of money.
the staff here is very nice but have incredibly strong accents, so get ready to ask them to repeat themselves. again, the food is delicious but the portions are small and the prices are high. they open til 2:00 am, which is why we went.
if you stay away from the market price items you may be able to eat here without taking out a second mortgage.

Now that KokeKokko is gone, and the trend in sushi is to copycat Jiro x Nozawa with that stifling, super-​rude, «you exist for me» attitude or BS Asian «Fusion» — where is a Japan-​fan to go for great eats in LA?
Raku fits the bill in a number of areas and falls short in only one (although important).
Food is masterful. And I would honestly stay away from most of the expensive stuff here. Grab their grilled robata /​yakitori selection which is really what is done best. Plus their fresh fish. But get things grilled. Sashimi was excellent but this is not a sushi spot and doesn’t have the vibe for it. Their tofu was mind blowingly good as well. As was everything actually.
Sit at the bar, order some very overpriced sake, and spent the rest of your dough on their amazing selection of grilled goodies.
Service was excellent. Atmosphere is beautiful (light in small room is too bright). Details are extraordinary from the menu to the sake cup selection. A true artist’s eye designed this space.
Owner is hard working Shokunin and a pleasure to chat with.
The only downside here is the crowd. As we are not downtown, it’s hipsters, Hollywood people and more uppity Asian crowd who are «in the know». You’re not having fun like you would at a real Ikazkaya in Japan since no one is drunk, and no one is… FUN…and as we are near Ktown, many men in here wearing trucker hats, who think they are still in a rap video.
I did see some cool Russian gangsters though. Big bodyguards. Looked like those thugs that Bugs Bunny used to torture.
So bring your own drunk Japanese friends and get a little louder than the library volume inside — I certainly did. And try what might be the best Japanese restaurant in California.

My friend and I were deeply impressed by the quality and uniqueness of the dishes.
Each dish we had was fantastic. The duck robata skewers were especially fantastic as were the agedashi tofu and uni/​egg dish.
The service was excellent, attentive and friendly. Can’t do much better than super cute Japanese servers!

High quality food! From cold dish to dessert:)
Only thing to note is that the foie gras egg custard: I originally thought that it was piece of foie gras on top but it’s really a piece of duck. Kind of a small disappointment. The server said that the foie gras was blended into the custard.
I am not sure about that but everything else was great!

I really like this place! the ambience is nice and the food quality is excellent as well! I’m a big fan of foie gras and their foie gras bowl is pretty nice! the portion is a bit small though haha!
Their green tea crème brûlée is excellent too! I would definitely come back again!

This is awesome Japanese izakaya style restaurant from Las Vegas.
Fresh fishes from Japan and Bincho charcoal grill.
And so many jizake (local sake in Japan).
You can enjoy great sake and food pairing!

We have been traveling to Vegas periodically only to satisfy our raku cravings and we were soo excited to know that they opened one in la!!!
We finally made it to their la location on a Tuesday evening and it was a pretty quiet evening there. We got our usual items: juicy fried chicken /​pork ears /​tofu /​poached eggs with uni n ikura /​wings /​silver skins /​chicken beast /​miso soup/​cheesecake and rice dishes .
I’m glad to say that this place is much very similar to the one in Vegas … Couple exceptions: cheesecake is slightly bigger here than Vegas but it’s less fluffy. Poached eggs were not as flavorful as the one in LV but it’s still good in my opinion
Will definitely return for more !

I experienced no issues or problems as mentioned from the many other Unilocal complaints. I came here on 11÷21÷15 (Saturday night) and ordered 4 things, to which 3 of them were from the specials board.
The main reason why the BF and I came here was for the Oyaji Tofu. Yes, we made sure to go out of our way to come here just for the friggin tofu (we were actually kind of in town for a friend’s wedding)! Shoot… Just thinking about that Oyaji Tofu makes my foodie senses tingle!
Item #1: Oyaji Tofu– It’s a simple dish that contains tofu, pickled cabbage (I think), garlic, and chili. You mix everything together and eat this so called mushy, messy, tofu goodness. Sit back and be prepared to have an appreciation for tofu. The concept is very simple that you wouldn’t have guessed it could be so flavorful.
Item #2: Wagyu Sukiyaki– I’ve never had sukiyaki before, but the BF said we had to order this; so here we are. The pot comes out on top of this wooden fire box and you have to wait for about 5 minutes for everything to cook up, so you’re just staring at this firey object… drooling… They handed us a bowl and an egg for us to crack as the dipping sauce; and you know this is not your grocery store bought egg because the yolk was super rich and sweet. Yummers! Well, the broth was very well seasoned and sweetened. This was a very interactive meal almost like a hotpot type of deal. It contained the wagyu meat, mushrooms, noodles, and cabbage; to which the hot items are than dipped into the cold raw egg and the slightly cooked rich egg sauce is now on smeared on the brothy hot chunk of yumminess.
Item #3: Live Uni Udon– OMFG! This was by far was the best udon and most expensive udon I’ve ever ate in my entire life. The uni itself was just pure rich, smooth, melted in your mouth sweet goodness. Like this was just AMAZEBALLS! The dish was cold, presented on ice in the uni shell and contained some of that salmon roe that bursts in your mouth too.
Item #4: Katsuo Tataki– This dish wasn’t too memorable for me. Not because it wasn’t good or anything, no no it was very good. This was just a sashimi dish to me. Just some raw high quality fish.
I also ordered hot tea, and the refills were prompt and I was never left sitting with an empty cup. I was skeptical at first because I had such a great experience in Vegas and the reviews about the LA location left me very wary, but I didn’t have any issues at all with food delays or service. I will return if I’m ever in the area. This place compared to Vegas is a few more bucks per item, but the quality is still the same.

I ordered omakasa yesterday it was 120 per person. We had 2 people and they put 2 people’s food in one plate, it’s omakasa should be very delicacy but they didn’t. The sashimi is good but just a little bit, grill fish was good too overall the gods was good but it’s not worth $ 400 yesterday.
It’s normal Japanese and yakitori fushion restaurant. Oh, the service is slow slow slow.

More. I want more. It was the perfect combination of flavors to create dishes that just come together in perfect harmony.
The food is so amazing that it makes up for the other problems. It took about an hour of calling before someone picked up. Then when making the reservation there was some uncertainty about when the table would be ready, but I still was able to get a last minute reservation on a Saturday night. There was no delay in getting a table and the waiter was incredibly nice, but there was several delays between dishes and almost 40 minutes after the last dish before we could get the check.
Be sure to give yourself plenty of time and enjoy every dish. It’s worth the slow pace.
Now for the food. First we started with the sashimi salad — salmon and amberjack on spinach with fried onions and a light dressing and some creamy spicy sauce. Huge portion and a good start (although this is the one item I might not get again — everything else I will). Then we had the agadashi tofu.
Two of us shared a half order and although the portion was big enough both of us were sad that we didn’t have any left. The broth was so delicate with a smooth comforting quality. The tofu almost had a sweet airy taste to it that was like a hug. I want more. My life is now incomplete without more. If you can’t tell — I would suggest getting this.
Next we had the chicken thigh and skirt steak skewers. How they can get so much flavor into a tiny bite is really unbelievable. Both are worth getting.
Finally we had the Oyaki bowl with chicken and egg on rice. This is the ultimate comfort food. The flavors combined perfectly. It was very light but filling and we couldn’t help but smile from it.
This is a Resturant worth the wait. Hopefully they can improve their timing, but even if they can’t it’s still a don’t miss and return to frequently option — I must have more agadashi tofu!

I came here first time at Monday night.
We have chef special.
That’s amazing.
And we drank 5 bottles sake.
Food is amazing and so many kind of sake they have .
We asked tasting 4 kind sake.
One is Hana no Mai.
That’s little bit sweet .
We choose that.
One moe is Yuzu taste.
That’s amazing too.
We had very good time.
Thanks chef.

Aburiya Raku is a new Oasis for many Japanese restaurant owners/​chefs in west side since they are open till two in the morning.
Unfortunately, my experience here wasn’t so astonishing. I guess my expectation was little too high upon coming here after reading great reviews about Raku in Las Vegas and finding that there is quite a hype among Japanese bloggers about this place.
I did enjoy some of their unique dishes such as steamed foie gras egg custard which was amazingly velvety and pork intestine robata grill which was very tender. Also, the green tea salt and the special blended soy sauce placed on each table have wonderful flavor and complement many dishes nicely.
In terms of their service, they offer warm hospitality and attentiveness. The wait time for each dish was little off, for some of the dishes, we had to wait for a long long time. I understand that they take pride in preparing each dish with care, but we got full while waiting for the next dishes…: /​
Would love to come back here again and try their other dishes that we didn’t have chance to enjoy. Hopefully, the time increment between each dish won’t be an issue next time.

I’ve a huge fan of Japanese cuisine so I was anxious to be one of the first to check out what was the most hyped new izakaya spot in town.
Went on a Wednesday evening their opening week. The spot is pretty tiny, but I wouldn’t have said that they were overly busy that particular evening at the time we arrived (10pm). A couple parties that checked in after us were seated before us which was a bit odd, but not too big of a deal.
We ordered a good amount of food, but the time it took to get our first item was a little silly. About 80% through our meal, a good amount of time sitting, we were kind of over waiting for the rest of the items and cancelled what was remaining to come.
Overall the food was good (a couple great items), but not exceptional. Definitely try the homemade tofu, as this was one of the best items on the regular menu that we had. I will give them a + for their extensive sake list, from which we got a very delicious bottle.
I’m sure you could equate all of this to them not really finding their groove yet as a new spot, so I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and give them another go maybe a month from now and update my review accordingly. Until then I’ll be going back to my regular spot of Robata Jinya, where the food I feel is comparable in quality as a lower price point.

I love the Raku in Vegas but I can only give this place 3 stars tops. We came on a Wednesday night at 10:30pm, not exactly prime dining time, and experienced the slowest service known to man. We waited 10 minutes to be seated only to finally be led out to a completely empty patio. I asked to see the specials board and it was brought by like 10 minutes later. Out of the 5 items we ordered, a pretty modest sized meal at Raku, we only received 2 items the entire first hour we were there. Dirty dishes were left uncleared. After we had finally gotten all our food and finished eating, it took another 20 minutes to get our bill. I get that you’ve just opened and haven’t perfected things yet but 90 minutes+ for 5 items? It was sad to wait for so long to get a small meat skewer to split between two people. Our server didn’t acknowledge the delay at all so maybe it was standard…
Service problems aside, the food itself was very hit or miss. We ordered the poached egg with uni and salmon roe ($ 12), bluefin tuna sashimi ($ 33), steamed foie gras custard ($ 12), and fried pork ear ($ 4) and kurobuta pork cheek ($ 5) robata. The bluefin sashimi was excellent. The custard was also very good but the actual piece of foie gras was very chewy and more like stringy undercooked bacon, with absolutely no unctuousness to it at all. The cold poached egg dish was interesting, if not necessarily good? It had a lot of cold, slimy textures going on with the poached egg and roe and uni and mushrooms. Not my fave. The pork cheek had good flavor but wasn’t that tender. The fried pork ear pieces weren’t crispy enough and I couldn’t even eat them.
In addition to slow service and less than stellar food, the bathrooms are in the back in a separate part of the restaurant and are really bad. Like rest stop calibre wretched. A nice restaurant needs better bathrooms! Potty elsewhere before coming here.
I was so excited that Raku opened up in LA. And now I’m so bummed it wasn’t very good. I won’t be back any time soon. Maybe this is a good excuse to go back to Vegas!