Hihi everyone, new account for just fine dining stuff now – the high end Japanese restaurants guide for the SF Bay Area will be back up soon, just needed to sort out another doxxing situation.
With this, the courses were:
1. Monterrey spot prawn, hodo soy milk tofu and young ginger – I felt this was the nicest main of the night. Very good few bites
2. San diego blue fin with Aji Amarillo from last year, tomatoes & tomato water, cucumbers and chili. This was a really good few bites as well, really clean flavour – tuna here wasn’t great but it worked nicely with the flavor enhancers
3. Egg custard tart with bonito and trout roe. Good few bites, very well done egg tart and roe was good quality
4. Taiwanese sausage in steamed brioche that also got fried a bit. This was a bit flat for me, slightly sweet and good meatiness from sausage but otherwise just wasn’t a huge part of the night for me
5. Salt and pepper maitake mushroom with little dollops of sauces I’m not remembering. This was alright, I grew up eating salt and pepper seafood like many people and this is reminiscent.
6. Cali Dungeness crab with crab shell butter, kokuho rice from Koda Farms and different varieties of seaweed – some pickled and some lightly dressed. Aroma on this was amazing, taste-wise it was a good filler course
7. Mt. Lassen trout with grilled corn and shishitos w a corn purée since I don’t like eggplant. Really well done, beautiful cook on the trout – when I saw how thin the piece was and the texture it arrived at I admit I was worried but perfect cook inside. All worked together really nice as well
8. Stemple creek short rib with alliums (the puree was essentially just a mashed garlic confit), apricots and radishes + fennel pollen pull apart rolls. Everyone uses either niman, stemple, SRF or flannery here – for good reasons, most of them put out great product. Stemple’s fully grass fed and finished and the taste variations are always fun to eat. This was a really good price, also cooked great even if it looked a bit overdone. The garlic confit purée was fantastic as well
9. Shiso ice cream w perilla and cocoa nibs. Fairly good, nice palette cleanser
10. Forest ranch blue pie and Star route farms charentais melon. With this I recommend folks start with the pie, I fucked up and went melon then my wine first and the sugar bomb kinda fucked my tongue up for the pie n I found it really bitter and slightly overly tart. Melon was great though
Overall, this was my second visit. First time I had a dietary restriction menu so it wasn’t really good – but this time with the normal menu, the appetizers and mains were fairly good and I just wasn’t huge on the desserts. They don’t really need any more positive coverage with the star and how far they’re booked up but I’d still definitely recommend it. Prices are going up to 180 pp in July so if you can get in at this price it’s an easy recommend, once it goes up I think it’s a bit more fairly priced for the Bay and there’s other options that are competitive quality and price wise (Mijote for example)
goldenmamba24
How’d you get a resy? Once it opens at noon, I always get a server error trying to book one on OpenTable and then after 30 seconds there are not available tables. Argh
Comfortable-Power-71
Well, I had a chance to go last year and skipped. Bet a resy now is gonna be as hard as Four Kings.
3 Comments
Hihi everyone, new account for just fine dining stuff now – the high end Japanese restaurants guide for the SF Bay Area will be back up soon, just needed to sort out another doxxing situation.
With this, the courses were:
1. Monterrey spot prawn, hodo soy milk tofu and young ginger – I felt this was the nicest main of the night. Very good few bites
2. San diego blue fin with Aji Amarillo from last year, tomatoes & tomato water, cucumbers and chili. This was a really good few bites as well, really clean flavour – tuna here wasn’t great but it worked nicely with the flavor enhancers
3. Egg custard tart with bonito and trout roe. Good few bites, very well done egg tart and roe was good quality
4. Taiwanese sausage in steamed brioche that also got fried a bit. This was a bit flat for me, slightly sweet and good meatiness from sausage but otherwise just wasn’t a huge part of the night for me
5. Salt and pepper maitake mushroom with little dollops of sauces I’m not remembering. This was alright, I grew up eating salt and pepper seafood like many people and this is reminiscent.
6. Cali Dungeness crab with crab shell butter, kokuho rice from Koda Farms and different varieties of seaweed – some pickled and some lightly dressed. Aroma on this was amazing, taste-wise it was a good filler course
7. Mt. Lassen trout with grilled corn and shishitos w a corn purée since I don’t like eggplant. Really well done, beautiful cook on the trout – when I saw how thin the piece was and the texture it arrived at I admit I was worried but perfect cook inside. All worked together really nice as well
8. Stemple creek short rib with alliums (the puree was essentially just a mashed garlic confit), apricots and radishes + fennel pollen pull apart rolls. Everyone uses either niman, stemple, SRF or flannery here – for good reasons, most of them put out great product. Stemple’s fully grass fed and finished and the taste variations are always fun to eat. This was a really good price, also cooked great even if it looked a bit overdone. The garlic confit purée was fantastic as well
9. Shiso ice cream w perilla and cocoa nibs. Fairly good, nice palette cleanser
10. Forest ranch blue pie and Star route farms charentais melon. With this I recommend folks start with the pie, I fucked up and went melon then my wine first and the sugar bomb kinda fucked my tongue up for the pie n I found it really bitter and slightly overly tart. Melon was great though
Overall, this was my second visit. First time I had a dietary restriction menu so it wasn’t really good – but this time with the normal menu, the appetizers and mains were fairly good and I just wasn’t huge on the desserts. They don’t really need any more positive coverage with the star and how far they’re booked up but I’d still definitely recommend it. Prices are going up to 180 pp in July so if you can get in at this price it’s an easy recommend, once it goes up I think it’s a bit more fairly priced for the Bay and there’s other options that are competitive quality and price wise (Mijote for example)
How’d you get a resy? Once it opens at noon, I always get a server error trying to book one on OpenTable and then after 30 seconds there are not available tables. Argh
Well, I had a chance to go last year and skipped. Bet a resy now is gonna be as hard as Four Kings.