Hitachiya

This small Southern California store is packed with specialty Japanese cookware, many of the same items sold at the original shop in Tokyo's Tsukiji market. Sushi chefs seek out Hitachiya for hand-forged knives and the sturdy bamboo baskets they use to carry ice and fish. Owner Masazumi Hirota has an eye for what cooks covet: oval cast-iron pots with removable handles, tin-lined copper pans for frying tempura, beautiful cedar and cherry wood and horsehair strainers, ivory sharkskin graters for fresh wasabi root, slender twig mats for serving sashimi—even a spike to secure a wriggling eel. A lesson in the beauty of everyday objects.