Gnawing thru LA: SHIN SEN GUMI YAKITORI

Shin Sen Gumi is one loud ass place. Soon as you walk in, you are greeted by everyone that works there. I believe the kitchen workers in the back say "Hello," too! This place is always crowded so you must put your name on the list that's outside of the restaurant. The wait can sometimes be long and it can sometimes be short, this time it was long. It took us about 30 minutes to get in there so we had no choice but to enjoy the view of Southbay Toyota's fleet of cars that are across the street..

Soon as we got in there, they put a plate of cabbage on your table for you to munch on. I never liked cabbage, but for some reason I enjoy these because of the light sauce that it is covered in.

All the yakatori is approximately $1.5 to $3.5 per stick depending on what you choose. You are given two menus, one of them are the appetizers, sides and meals and the other is like a sushi menu that you mark yourself and that one contains the list of yakatori choices.

The first one of our choices that came out was the flap meat. Cooked medium rare and season with salt, the meat was soft, juicy and bursting with flavor.

Agedashi was good. This is made of fried tofu that is sitting in tentsuya broth w/ grated daikon and topped with bonito flakes, seaweed and green onions. This is a refreshing dish that got us ready for the rest of our meal.

This was the chicken breast w/ plum paste and shiso leaves. The plum paste gave the chicken a sour tart taste and the shiso leaves tastes of a lite basil. It was a good combination of flavor.

One of my favorites. This is quail eggs wrapped in bacon. This was awesome. The salty flavor of the bacon went wonderful with the mellow flavored yolk of the egg.

Chicken thigh w/ green onions (in house sauce) was great. The chicken was juicy and the sauce was something else. I couldn't get enough of the sauce, in fact, I wanted to dip everything in it and lick up whatever was left over.

One of these are the made of asparagus wrapped in pork belly and the other three are made of enoki mushrooms wrapped in pork belly. I didn't try the asparagus, but the enoki was excellent. The pork belly was like a bacon but not as crisp and not as salty.

Only two of us went for the beef tongue. To bad for them because this was good. It had a chewy texture the I wasn't expecting and was flavored with just a little sprinkle of salt.

This was the potato that we order. Everybody ordered this. At first glance, we thought it was covered in cheese, but it wasn't cheese, it was butter! This was just your typical baked potato with a char taste to it.

This was the killer right here. This is crunchy chicken skin. Not necessarily the most healthiest choice but was easily one of the best ones. This was glazed with the house sauce and was just amazing when you bit into it. It was crisp and when you take a bit all the fat greasy goodness runs right down your throat. So damn bad for you, but so damn good!

The skewers. For four orders of rice (also really good) and tap water to drink, the bill came up to be $80+. This is a fun cool place and the price wasn't bad because we all came out really full.