On the degree of difficulty scale, getting the average American excited about Japanese food ranks somewhere between landing a spaceship on a speeding comet and fully understanding the Hawley-Smoot Act of 1933.

“But ELV,” you’re probably saying to yourself right now, ” what about the sushi craze of the past twenty years? You can buy sushi rolls everywhere from convenience stores to high school football games these days. Surely that disproves your theory!”

To which we reply: “It does not disprove my theory, and don’t call me Shirley.”

Because (if you don’t know it by now) the average store-bought sushi, or overwrought maki roll, has as much in common with real Japanese food as Kim Kardashian does with Meryl Streep.

No matter what the cuisine, eating ethnic in America rarely equates with edible authenticity, and the foreign foods that have established a beachhead on these shores have done so by permuting the template of a country’s eating habits into an unrecognizable stew of ingredients and excess. Thus has everything from chop suey to the dreaded California roll “conquered” the American palate — with barely a nod to where they came from — and what passes for Italian food in the flyover states would be unrecognizable to a Tuscan prince or a Sicilian peasant. And what American business has done to the that most delicious of street foods: the Neapolitan pizza is nothing short of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Japanese food has yet to suffer the indignities Italy has had to endure,  notwithstanding the sodomizing of certain sushi rolls, and its ingredient- and precision-driven style almost guarantees that no half-ass, round-eye chef will try to pull it off. True Japanese restaurants, even in big cities, are few and far between, and when you see one you can pretty much be assured that a person of Japanese ancestry is running it… and that they have more than a passing acquaintance with the food in its purest form.

(Note: When you see nothing but the words “Sushi,” “Sushi Bar,” or “All-You-Can-Eat Sushi” on the signage, you can bet dollars-to-doughnuts the joint is owned by Koreans — at least in Las Vegas.)

But don’t think we’re painting all Japanese restaurants with the same brush. From curry houses to noodle bars to ramen dens, there are a myriad of styles and levels of formalities when it comes to this cuisine, and the good news is it seems to be exploding in our humble burg. Ramen bars are popping up like pho parlors, and in less than six years, we’ve gone from a town that couldn’t pronounce the word izakaya to one that has a handful of very good ones.

If you’re nuts about this food (as we are) you can thank one man for blazing the trail of quality cooking at considerate prices, and if you own an izakaya, you really ought to give Mitsuo Endo 5% of your profits. For it was Endo-san who first schooled Las Vegas (2008) in the art of agadashi tofu, and the wonders of Japanese charcoal grilling

Technically, Raku is an aburiya (a fancier version of an izakaya), but it’s popularity (and national recognition) has spawned others from the Land of the Rising Sun to feed off his leftovers, meaning: satisfy the legions of hungry customers who can’t get a table there.

The good news is now those customers now have two places to go, each within minutes of Raku, where the fish, the skewers and the veggies are almost as good, the sake selection equally superb, and the service  not nearly as pressed for time.

IZAKAYA COCOKALA opened in the Spring, but we didn’t get around to eating there until late Fall. We probably would’ve ignored it completely, but for the entreaties of super sake sommelier Yukiko Kawasaki to meet her at J Sake Bar one fateful night. What we thought was going to be a small sake tasting turned out to be slightly more extensive :

(ELV highly recommends finding your own sake gals for maximum sake satisfaction.)

Of course, when you’re doing all that drinking, nothing beats some first class food to match. What first caught our eye  (aside from my lovely drinking companions), was the simple, easy-to-read menu:

Don’t speak  or read Japanese? Then may we heartily suggest you cultivate a sake babe or two to help you navigate these tasty waters. (In all seriousness, the other side is in English and the staff is very helpful.)

Cocokala provides the late night nibbles for sake seekers  at J Sake bar, and is a much larger, full service restaurant just ten steps away.

That mall has been home to Thai Spice and the original offshoot of  Piero’s (now called Pasta Mia) and would be the last place in town one would suspect would be housing food and drink this fantastic. The owner of both (Ms. Teruyo Takumi) moved here from Japan last year and no doubt saw opportunity where others (such as yours truly) could only see a tired, past-its-prime shopping center. Like Endo-san before her, she probably doesn’t understand that conventional wisdom says stay away from such a lousy location.

But that’s where  the Japanese work ethic has it all over us, and why we’re such big admirers of what they’ve brought to the Vegas food scene. They’re willing to go small, take manageable risks, live above the store, stay true to their roots, and settle for a modest living rather than hunger for fame and fortune. You’ll never get rich running a fifty seat pub where most of the menu is priced under ten bucks. But if you do it well, and the word gets out, you can find your market.

As luck would have it, food fashion, health concerns, and the world economy have aligned American 21st Century eating habits squarely with the everyday food that has been part of the Japanese diet for centuries. We’d love to ascribe all sorts of genius and mystical powers to these chefs, but all they really did was look at the small plates revolution going on over here and see a natural fit with their cuisine.

What will fit your eye as well as your palate are what they call “spoon rice” on the menu:

…$2-$4 a spoon and a lot less challenging than trying to attack sushi rice with chopsticks.

After those,we told the staff to go nuts and they did, serving us what seemed like half the menu. From the skewers to the salads to the whole grilled fish, the kitchen asserted its confidence with assertive seasonings balanced with precise cooking. And what Chef Takeshi Morishita’s dishes lack in Raku-like refinement (or Yonaka-like ingenuity) they more than made up for in fun.

Which is what an izakaya is about, after all. Nibbling on a variety of foods has replaced individual slabs of protein, and even a luscious  piece of braised black pork belly:

….is best when only a bite or two is taken of it.

(Rich enough for ya?)

The something-for-everyone menu will appeal to the Japanese food novice or aficionado in your crowd, and serious fish folks will fawn over the gorgeous whole steamed renko dai (yellowback  sea bream- pictured at the top of the page), or some threeline grunt sashimi:

The sake list is extensive (over 100 labels); the Japanese microbrews are on tap, and the J Sake bar opens at 9:00 every night for those who want to continue their serious sake sipping.

Put it all together and you have another delicious little corner of authentic Asian eats, and a nice alternative when Yonaka and Raku have lines out the door.

Will all of ELV’s enthusiasm cause some timid picky gringo to try this country’s food? Probably not. Perhaps if they called them “Japanese tapas” the Summerlin crowd would flock there, but it’s a fair bet that anytime you see “Japanese” and “tapas” on the same sign, the ownership is from Korea.

All we know is this: If more people ate the Japanese way — the izakaya way — both our waistlines and our planet would be a lot better off.

ELV’s dinner for three, with enough food for six, came to $180 – including tip.

IZAKAYA COCOKALA

J SAKE BAR

4459 West Flamingo Road

Las Vegas, NV 89103

702.538.9556