RESTAURANTS : HIGH TIDE : Five Restaurants Prove That It’s Not All That Difficult to Find a Place With Great Seafood

Three big restaurants opened in Los Angeles this past year, and Water Grill, Opus and McCormick and Schmick’s have one thing in common: They all specialize in fish. Reading what has been written about them, you’d think that until they came along it was impossible to get a decent piece of fish in Southern California.

That, of course, is nonsense. We’ve been eating great fish around here for years. And just to prove it, I spent a week eating seafood in some great Asian restaurants.

MONDAY. For 1 hour and 36 minutes, the people at the next table have been talking about food. First they analyzed what they ate last night. Then they moved on to lunch. Now they are dissecting the dishes they’ve already eaten tonight.

How do I know this? Because at our table we’ve been too busy eating to say much at all. First we have duck smoked over burning tea leaves and wrapped in Chinese crepes. The skin is sharp and brittle in its soft coat of crepes, and the pink flesh has the elusively sweet bitterness of tobacco.

Next we have a soothing dish of squid in a mild green sauce of herbs and garlic. A clump of crunchy sizzling rice which sits in the middle of the dish like so many Rice Krispies, provides contrast. And, finally, we have the dish that brought us back here.

I’ve waken up in the middle of the night with the taste of Yujean Kang’s lobster in my mouth. The meat is scooped out of the shell, sauteed with mushrooms, fava beans and chile sauce and then lovingly laid back in. Topped with a generous dollop of caviar, this is a dish that is better now than it was when the restaurant opened, a wonderful dish, a dish that explains why this modest little Pasadena restaurant has become a major foodie destination.

Yujean Kang, 67 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena; (818) 585-0855. Entrees, $10.95 - $35.

TUESDAY. At Yujean Kang, you can hear what the people at the next table are saying. At Carrots, you can barely hear the people at your own. This room is both loud and dim, and the soft roar in the air and the dark green of the walls give me a submerged and sleepy feeling.

Then the food comes and wakes me up. The appetizer of sauteed fresh foie gras with apples and wine sauce is indebted to Chinois--the chef once worked there--but the sauteed seafood cake owes a debt to nobody. These are the best seafood cakes in Southern California, fat little patties made of crab and shrimp with the fine, salty taste of the sea. They are served in a sweet, rich sauce made of port and butter, a sharp contrast to the clean taste of the seafood.

There is an emphasis on seafood here: jumbo scallops are grilled, salmon comes in a red wine sauce, halibut is topped with goat cheese. Carrots, like Yujean Kang, serves upscale Asian food at upscale prices in a downscale room.

Carrots, 2834 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 453-6505. Entrees, $14.75 - $22.50 .

WEDNESDAY. This room is as vast as an ocean liner, so big that it’s virtually impossible for the naked eye to see from one end to the other. Before she directs us to a table, the hostess is forced to consult with someone on a walkie-talkie.

One side of the room is dominated by tanks filled with live crab, lobster, shrimp, scallops and fish. When we order shrimp, the waiter runs off, scoops them from the tank and brings them back, still kicking in a plastic bag. We nod appreciatively and he’s gone again; moments later he returns, bearing a platter topped with a gleaming pink pile.

The shrimp are huge, simply steamed and still so hot we burn our fingers pulling off the shells. There’s a sauce of soy, ginger and scallions to dip them into.

The rice is another adventure; it has its own cart that rolls around the room. When we flag it down we’re rewarded with fragrant bowls of rice so hot that steam goes hissing up as it escapes into the air. As a side dish, we have fresh pea shoots; bright green, they taste the way spinach would if it could.

The service here is extraordinary--dishes come with dazzling speed. Ocean Star is as close as you can get to the floating restaurants of Hong Kong without boarding a plane.

Ocean Star, 145 N. Atlantic Blvd., Monterey Park; (818) 308-2128. Entrees, $5.50 - $40.

THURSDAY. Like Monterey Park, Yaohan Plaza is a place that makes most of us feel foreign. Shibucho, the best sushi bar in this three-floor mall of shops and restaurants, is no exception; eating here is easiest if you speak Japanese.

I don’t, and as always I am shunted off to the side of the sushi bar where a young chef plies his trade. He doesn’t cut as expertly as the masters he works with, and I can’t help feeling slightly second class.

First he hands me a little bowl of edamame-- fresh soybeans. (The first time I came, I embarrassed myself by eating the pods. I know better now: I pop out the slick beans and leave the fuzzy pods.) Meanwhile the chef is carefully making oshizu sushi. He packs rice into a worn, wooden mold, carefully tops it with strips of marinated mackerel, then presses a wooden top into place. When he removes it, he has a long, almost square roll of kansai -style sushi that he cuts into pieces. I am surprised when, having already given me giant clam, tuna, yellowtail and sea urchin, he hands one of these across the counter.

Shibucho, 333 S. Alameda St., 317, Los Angeles; (213) 626-1184. Average sushi prices.

FRIDAY. The Yaohan market in Torrance is surrounded by terrific places to eat. The most exotic of these is surely Seafood Club, a sushi bar where live fish swim merrily in a tank just below the counter.

Two of us plunk ourselves down at the sushi bar and ask the chef to feed us whatever he thinks is best. It’s a wonderful parade of fish--silky tuna, strips of crunchy yellow herring roe, Spanish mackerel with flesh so sweet it seems perfumed. For almost an hour the fish keeps coming.

It is all fresh and wonderful stuff. As I watch the chef struggle to remove a crab from the tank, I can’t help thinking that, compared to this, all those new places are, well, predictable.

Seafood Club, 1757 W. Carson St., Torrance; (310) 782-0530. Average sushi prices.