First impressions: Bond Street

(Credit: LA Times/Lori Shepler)

Stocks are down, Bond is up—and running! The New York transplant from Jonathan Morr shows all the signs of a healthy portfolio: a dining room designed by Dodd Mitchell (think sleek lines and leather), silky hostess dresses fashioned by Debra Rodman (she of the modern pinafore dress fame), and a Japanese/sushi kitchen run by Hiroshi Nakahara, previously at the helm of Bond Street in New York. Looks and sounds great, but is it worth investing?

The restaurant is tucked into the lobby of the Thompson, one in a chain of boutique hotels that also includes the Roosevelt. In its “manifesto” (seriously, that’s what it’s called), the Thompson solicits “good looking revolutionaries,” and they seem to have found each other in the booths of Bond Street, wielding chopsticks and AmEx gold cards. It’s an attractive crowd, but not your typical set of scenesters. Case in point: We spot Jaleel White—who will never grow out of his Urkel pants—filling the room’s revenge-of-the-nerd quotient.

Service is attentive and energetic. We’re seated immediately at our appointed time and shimmy into our corner table. (No one over a size 4 is fitting through that divide to get to the banquette seat.) Within minutes, we’ve got hot towels to clean our hands, hot sake, edamame on the house, and a somewhat-too-salty miso soup. In as many minutes, we’re greeted by five servers making sure there isn’t anything else we need. It’s a boon to have so many helping hands, but we can’t get anyone to talk to us in any depth about what we’re here for: the food.

Bond Street’s sushi bar sits at the back of the L-shaped dining room and is separated from the rest of the restaurant—perhaps as a sign that the food itself takes a back seat to the overall scene. There are some exotic choices, to be sure: golden amberjack, Japanese red snapper and cured fluke. But we opt to start simple with some of Nakahara’s signatures. With garlic ponzu oil and green-tea salt, the sun-dried-tomato-and-avocado roll is a mouth pleaser with all the right oppositions of chewy, creamy, sweet and savory, while the more mundane spicy tuna proves passable but doesn’t dazzle.

The 6 BOND Nigiri is a collection of toro, salmon, fluke, kanpachi, shrimp and clam. It’s a fresh and functional array, and each fish is paired with its own topping. But at $28, it’s not unreasonable to think we’re really paying for that spot of caviar and gold leaf dotted atop the toro. In the end, Bond Street turns out to be an investment strikingly similar to a bond security: You’re guaranteed a reasonable return on your money (which you’ll shell out plenty of), but taste-for-taste it’s not the most risky or the most rewarding—to say nothing of the opportunity costs of spending your time in a Beverly Hills hotel when you could be having mind-blowing sushi elsewhere.

Food: Pricier-than-pricey sushi, nouveau Japanese entrees.

Scene: “Good looking revolutionaries,” or chicks in heels and dudes in suits (investment bankers, perhaps?).

Insider tip: Dessert is best ventured elsewhere.

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