In the world of L.A. punk, it's common to pay the bills with a kitchen job. For most, the two passions exist side-by-side but never touch. By day, they cook in the heat of L.A.'s kitchens; by night, they burn it down in the city's thriving underground punk scene.
But as of this week, that separation is officially over for Japanese fine dining and punk veteran Tsubasa Muratani, whose worlds are colliding in the form of his long-awaited punk rock Japanese Izakaya in Little Tokyo, FUNHOUSE.
“Somewhere, along the last 20 years of me playing guitar, I discovered that cooking is as fun as playing punk rock music,” Muratani tells L.A. TACO on the day before his soft opening. He moved to Los Angeles from Fukuoka, Japan, in 2005 to pursue punk rock and worked as the general manager and (and sometimes sushi chef, or whatever else needed to get done) at Sushi Enya for the last ten years.