Torrance: Fried food feasting at Kushiage Dining Horon

Found a little gem in Torrance!

Kushiage Dining Horon is a restaurant that Calvin and I have wanted to try for the longest time because it is a restaurant that specializes in fried food!  More specifically, fried skewers.  Kushiage is like yakitori, except that it is all fried instead of grilled.  The great thing is that most skewers here are only $1, so we just marked off whatever we wanted.  Not the healthiest thing but meh, feasting time!


Kushiage Dining Horon
2143 W 182nd St
Torrance, CA 90504
dininghoron.com

Izakaya menu.  We ordered a few things off this menu too.

Of course, beer + fried food is one of the best combo ever.  In this case, Asahi and fried skewers!  Also, from this picture you can sorta tell that it is a small restaurant.  We sat at the end of the restaurant.

Sunomono.  Cabbage not cured for that long, so it's quite crunchy and refreshing!

First item that arrived was the Tokotsu Ramen.  Very thick, rich, flavorful, oily ramen broth.  Chasu is very good too!  They also use straight noodles, but I do prefer chijire men more because the wavy noodles allows the broth to stick on easier.  Seems like during lunch, the place is a ramen bar.  Need to come here.

Two types of sauce: honey mustard and worcestershire-based.  The worcestershire-based sauce is pretty much a lighter version of tonkatsu sauce.

Different types of salt to try with the kushiage: curry salt, saffron salt, and Himalayan pink salt.  I used the pink salt much more versus the others.

Skewers arrive!  Scallops, salmon, quail.

Scallop with herb butter.  Fresh scallop fried with butter!

Salmon with salmon roe.  Thin piece of salmon.  Too bad I got a piece without much roe :P

A look inside at the soy-marinated quail eggs.  I love quail eggs so I liked this a lot.  Couldn't really taste the marinade though.  Very good with the honey mustard sauce.

Before the rest of our skewers arrived, our Sizzling Pork Jowl came!  Pork jowl is actually a really delicious cut of pork since there's tendon throughout the jowl so it gives it a nice bite, but tender at the same time.  The soy dressing was really good and filled the whole restaurant with the smell.

Sausages, pork belly, chicken meatball.

Black pork sausages.  A bit salty, but you get a great pop when you bite into the sausage!

Pork belly with Welsh onions.  Super soft pork belly!

Usually in yakitori places, chicken meatballs are grilled and comes in all sort of shapes and sizes.  Here, it is in a corn dog shape, then fried.

Inside.  Awesome with all sauces and salt.

More fried goodness!

Curry-filled bread and fried mochi with cheese.  The curry bread is essentially a small piece of toast, folded in half with some curry.

Cheeeeese!

Fron to back: chicken meatball stuffed shiitake mushroom, enoki mushrooms bacon wrap, garlic trio, and eggplant with miso.  Didn't try the eggplant since I don't like eggplant... but...

...  enoki mushrooms bacon wrap was awesome.  Bacon-wrapped anything is good, let alone fried haha.  On top of the shiitake mushroom, is a piece of the garlic trio.  Pretty much just fried garlic.  I liked it since I like garlic but it might be a little too boring for some.

Japanese Spring Rolls, with snapper, pickled radish & carrots, Japanese yam, and cabbage.  Forgot what the sauce was... but this was the most forgettable dish though :P 

So after the spring rolls, we wanted more, and instead of ordering from the $1 section, we decided to splurge a bit.  Some of these are around $2.50 per skewer.

Alice's soft shell crab with tartar sauce.  Sorry for the blurry pic.  I didn't take that good of a picture cause I was too excited to eat what I ordered haha.

Calvin's giant shrimp.

He gave me the shrimp head.  Yummy brains.

Soy marinated tuna.  Tuna is still best raw or rare.  It was a bit tough after it was fried.  The marinade was really tasty though.

My creamy crab croquette.  Could be without the mayo sauce on the top.

Ended our meal with some shishito peppers with ponzu sauce.  I like how they add bonito flakes.

Even though it was $1 for most of the skewers, we ended up spending $30 each... Quite expensive but it was a great experience and we had a lot of fun trying out all the different items!  Probably will have to be awhile before I come back.  My heart is probably hating me right now.