A Live Tuna Cutting in Hollywood Leads Your L.A. Weekend

The Japanese Food Expo at Ovation Hollywood runs just two days, and adult tickets cost $50.

A tuna gets cut up live at Ovation Hollywood this weekend, and more than 100 kinds of Japanese food come with your ticket.

That's the Japanese Food Expo, one of the finds in We Like L.A.'s weekly roundup, which lists sake and beer samplings, calligraphy demos and bento workshops on top of the tasting. It's on for two days only. It leads a weekend that also has a Peter Pan light trail in Palos Verdes, skating downtown and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi in Westwood. Book the food first.

The expo starts at 5 p.m. Friday in Suite 521 at 6801 Hollywood Blvd. and runs through Saturday, according to Ovation Hollywood's listing. The Japanese Food Culture Association sells tickets on Eventbrite, and admission covers the food and drink tastings.

Adults 21 and up pay $50, according to We Like L.A. Kids' tickets go as low as $25, and children 5 and under get in free. The workshops and a rakugo storytelling show from Katsura Sunshine each need a separate ticket.

If you'd rather eat one thing well, there's Mish, chef Eric Greenspan's deli at 127 S. La Brea Ave. The pastrami is smoked over hardwood and carved by hand, Mish's website says, and the Montreal-inspired bagels take a honey-water bath before a live fire bakes them. It's open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, and it's walk-ins only.

Park in the lot at La Brea and 2nd, where you enter from the alley and two validated hours cost $5. After dark the deli closes for what it calls curated events, with DJs and a vinyl lounge upstairs, but it doesn't post a schedule for those nights, so come for lunch.

Down in Palos Verdes Estates, Tinker Bell's Neverland: An Illuminated Adventure opens Friday at South Coast Botanic Garden, and We Like L.A. bills it as the show's U.S. debut. The light trail takes you from a glowing London skyline to the Lost Boys' hideout and Crocodile Creek, according to the show's site, and the walk takes 60 to 90 minutes.

It runs every evening from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. The season ends Jan. 3, and We Like L.A. puts tickets at $34.33 and up. Tickets are sold through Fever. You can't get a refund, but you can change your date up to 48 hours ahead.

Here's the catch. The on-site lot is first come, first served unless you prebuy a spot. Once it fills, you're sent to an overflow lot at 25851 Hawthorne Blvd., and from there everyone needs a round-trip shuttle pass. The shuttle adds about 15 minutes, and the trail doesn't take cash.

Downtown, the 7,200-square-foot rink in Pershing Square opened for the season Thursday. Friday sessions run from 3 to 10 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday the ice opens at noon, according to the rink's site. A ticket is $23.32 with skate rental, and lockers are $5.30 on the rink's price list, though its site also says $5.

Leave the car at home: the Metro B and D Lines stop at Pershing Square Station, and the garage is first come, first served. If weather cancels your session, your ticket's good for any open slot through Jan. 3.

Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Westwood, the Hammer Museum's MoMA Contenders series shows Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden at the Billy Wilder Theater. Afterward, Hamaguchi and actor Tao Okamoto come out to talk, the Hammer says. The film follows a French nursing home director and a Japanese theater director with terminal cancer who meet by chance in Paris, and it runs 196 minutes.

It's $20 a seat, half that if you're a Hammer member, with a limit of two per buyer. Parking under the museum is a flat $9 after 5 p.m. on weekdays. Seats are assigned at the box office, there's no late seating, and unclaimed tickets get released at 7:20. The box office opens at 6:30. Be there at 6:30.

Source: welikela.com, retrieved November 12, 2026. Other sources: ovationhollywood.com, eventbrite.com, Mish's website, tinkerbellsneverland.com, holidayicerinkdowntownla.com, hammer.ucla.edu.