お多福 Otafuku
🇯🇵 JAPAN / FREE FRIDAY FAVORITES: This Gardena izakaya is the type of place you take friends that you want to impress with one of Los Angeles's best meals.
🇯🇵 JAPAN
📍 16525 S. Western Avenue,
Gardena, South Bay
🅿️ Small lot in rear
🥤 Beer, wine, shochu
📸 All photos by Jared Cohee
for Eat the World Los AngelesFREE FRIDAY FAVORITES is a series of articles that revisit choice restaurants featured on eattheworldla.com over the years. These will never be behind the paywall, but will update information as necessary and always be about meals that are worth returning for again.
📆 Original Article 27 December 2021Despite being well-known by its surrounding community in Gardena and those interested in foods throughout wider Los Angeles, little two-room Otafuku has kept its very reserved profile on Western Avenue for its over two decades of life since opening in the late 90's. Without word of mouth, you would fly by without looking twice. And this is probably for the best, as the restaurant is no secret and often gets very busy.
While it sort of hides out in the open on busy Western Avenue, Otafuku is the modest type of place you might find on a small alley in a Japanese city with a solitary red lantern outside displaying the kanji for izakaya on it. The type of place full of folks out for a night of drinking, which in Japan must include plenty of delicious eating options. In Otafuku, which means much good fortune, no one will look twice if you do not order any alcohol because their food is so good.
Like any great izakaya, the menu is expansive and can cover any direction you want to bring your meal. It also seems to have a lot of more special and/or rare things that are not seen on a ton of other menus around town. Most likely at dinner there could be a wait if you show up unannounced, but it is always worth it as proven by the wide variety and ages of customers who are consistently enjoying meals.
For good reason, one of the most sought after items here is the soba, made by hand daily. They make three types, of which the most popular and distinct is the seiro, a white noodle that uses only the heart of buckwheat. Classic brown zaru soba is also available and great in hot broth, as well as a 100% buckwheat (no flour) noodle known as kikouchi. More on these sobas down near their photos below.
All soba noodles are extremely firm at Otafuku but give way to your teeth with a sort of melt-in-your-mouth character. Chewing on them reveals how recently they were made and how much love went into making each strand.
On hot days, the dining room is notoriously steamy and the cold dipping noodles are the way to go. Especially with the zaro, a hot bowl is perfect on colder winter nights. You can get combination meals with tempura and other items or order everything a la carte.
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