Shirley W.
Yelp
We don't visit Gardena that often, but we were looking for some authentic Japanese food in the area. I found this place on Yelp and we decided to go! The parking lot is filled with many good eateries that the parking lot is really packed! The parking lot is also tight, so there's not a lot of space to back out and maneuver around. Kotohira is located right at the corner, it's a small shop so it may be hard to miss!
We walked in for lunch on a Sunday afternoon, and it was really quiet in there. The restaurant is small with a few tables here and there so we were the only other party besides another at that time. Based from their menu, there was so many good items to choose from! It seems like the most popular choices were one of their udon sets or the bento set that comes with everything. We ended up trying both since we wanted try a little bit of everything.
After we ordered, they offered us these potato salads, it was a great start! The potato salad was sooo smooth. Then it didn't take too long for our sets to come in. I got the udon unagi set and my bf got the bento set. Trying my udon first, this was honestly really good! I'm really used to having marugame udon and sometimes marugame is too salty for me, but the udon here was really nice! The noodle textures were nice and chewy and the broth was really good! I really drank a lot of the broth. Even finishing the bowl, I already felt so full to have the unagidon. Although, the unagi was also really good!! The unagi was really soft and smooth, I really enjoyed the eel sauce they had too. I didn't get to finish more of the rice with the unagi, but I wish I could have since it tasted so good with it!
Trying some of my bf's bento, he gave me his shrimp tempura since he's allergic to shrimp, but that was really good! The batter was really nice and crispy, and the shrimp was surprisingly really juicy. I also tried his tuna which was really smooth as well. The chicken was pretty decent as well.
We really enjoyed this place! Such a small cozy and authentic Japanese joint, it honestly feels very reminiscent to our Japan travels. There's mainly two waitresses in store and they were both very kind.