This Saturday we had the opportunity to check out the sights and eats at the 8th Annual Japanese Food Festival, which was held at the lovely New Otani Hotel in downtown and hosted by the Japanese Restaurant Association (JRA) of Southern California. There were lots of tasty bites to eat, and plenty to drink, as well as crowd pleasing entertainment, like the Sushi Making Contest. We did our best to capture a taste of......

The Japanese Food Festival, a one day event being held at The New Otani Hotel, will be occurring this Saturday, October 27 from 11AM to 3PM. Tickets are 50 bucks but that includes all-you-can-eat-sushi as well as all-you-can-drink sake and beer (yay!). Hosted by the Japanese Restaurant Association of Southern California, there will be a best sushi chef contest, demonstrations of how to fillet a tuna, Jazz, and sake and beer tasting (drinks!). Do you......

It's certainly no secret that LAist loves Japanese food. After all, we're on a constant search for new adventures in sushi. This weekend we're excited to report that the Japanese Restaurant Association of Southern California is sponsoring a one-day only Japanese Food Festival, to be held in one of our favorite downtown spots, the New Otani Hotel. The event will include demonstrations, for food preps like ultra long rolled sushi and filleting a large......

...the Beer Garden, that is. Back in June we applauded the impending summer opening of the New Otani Hotel's rooftop Beer Garden, and now that we've enjoyed some mugs of Kirin and some hibachi grilling, we're ready to laud this seasonal downtown hangout yet again. A few floors above the lobby level (not quite the roof, but a roof) is the hotel's lovely Japanese gardens, complete with waterfalls and streams, paper lanterns in bright......