Gonpachi wants to be the happiest place on earth
LA's hottest restaurant designer isn't Dodd Mitchell. It's Walt Disney, the man who wasn't content to create an amusement park; he had to build the Happiest Place on Earth.
Similarly, many Los Angeles restaurants aren't content to be "restaurants," based on the consumption of food and wine. They want to be Restaurants, where Customers Consume the Experience.
Disney's spirit has long possessed the La Cienega restaurant corridor that's anchored by The Stinking Rose, which still prides itself on the ability to inject anything with that wacky allium known as garlic (Genuine tagline: "It's cool, it's hip, IT STINKS!").
And now, across the street, there's Gonpachi. Much has been made about how Gonpachi is imported from Japan and it's just like being Tokyo. And technically, that's true. There is a Gonpachi in Tokyo, and it apparently looks quite similar. However, it's a genuine Japanese dining experience much as TGI Friday's is a genuine American dining experience.
"Though a Disney-like vision, Gonpachi isn’t Main Street, USA.... Global-Dining isolates the archetypal ingredients of a culture and exaggerates them, creating evocative, theatrical spaces where dining is part of the show... The overall design is almost identical to Zest in Ebisu, but with a Japanese not Tex-Mex theme." (emphasis mine)
For those who didn't know (that included me), Global-Dining is the NewsCorp of restaurant chains. In addition to the aforementioned properties, there's another nine or so in Japan, including something called the Food Colosseum. ("Having Luxury as its main concept, a large-scale food court Food Colosseum offers you with booths of various genres of cuisine, such as Italian, Tex-Mex, Ethnic and Japanese.") In America, G-D also owns La Boheme in WeHo and Monsoon in Santa Monica.
And now Gonpachi, a multilevel restaurant so big that bartenders are equipped with walkie-talkies and the managers wear earpieces. It's also outfitted with a tea garden, a pond (a little sulfurous) and, every few feet, a reminder that Gonpachi intends to transport you Somewhere Else.
Here and there are Shogun swords and Samurai battle armor, bartenders dressed in a sort of modified gi and there's a chef in a glassed-in box, making soba noodles.
From the floor's wood inlays to the landscaping, no expense was spared -- but the concept is so oversized that the overall effect is a little embarrassing, like looking at the waiters with their mandated 20 pieces of flair.
The food? Given the corporate parentage, it's just fine; certainly better than TGIF. Those slave-labor noodles were very good, the best of the evening. (They grind their own buckwheat.) Sushi is serviceable. The shrimp croquette is tasty; it's a lot of cooked, diced shrimp lightly bound and fried with panko and topped with very long crunchy tendrils that make it look fancier than it is. However, the eponymous Gonpachi Croquette -- mushy potato with some kind of Velveeta-ish cheese in the center -- is flatout nasty.
Prices are reasonable and there was a healthy Friday night crowd with both young couples and families with kids; probably not much different than Stinking Rose. And, as of this writing, Stinking Rose is the fifth most popular of the 505 Los Angeles restaurants in the Open Table reservations system.
Finally: Gonpachi is a weird name for a restaurant with Disneyland aspirations. A renowned historical figure of the 17th century, Gonpachi's hobbies included robbery, murder and overall debauchery before he was executed by haritsuke (impalement with spears while tied to a crucifix) in 1679. Just saying.
The Stinking Rose is the 5th most popular? That is extremely depressing.
I was there and noticed that the "healthy Friday night crowd" at Gonpachi had the previous owner of SIXTEEN NCAA rushing records (and most likely the last white guy to own them). A man who WAS Hill Street Blues -- Ed Marinaro. And with that name, why doesn't have a restaurant, or at least his own sauce on the shelves?
Posted by: Big Bomb | June 15, 2007 at 03:46 PM