Ren Omakase (Menlo Park, CA) – How Good is the Bay’s Second Most Popular Omakase Spot?
Ren Omakase (Menlo Park, CA) – How Good is the Bay’s Second Most Popular Omakase Spot?
by NoodleThings
2 Comments
NoodleThings
Ren is famed Bay Area sushi entrepreneur, Sunny Noahs, most popular restaurant and almost by far the second most popular high end sushi restaurant in the area. In a market where many restaurants are struggling to book out appointments more than a week ahead, Ren was able to have months and months booked out (a function of the restaurant choosing to keep their opening price point for a longer time + some hype out the gate off the back of the uni course).
I’ve been to Ren closer to the opening but wanted to see how the restaurants changed as it turns the corner closer to eventually raising its prices in November.
The courses were:
1. Chopped PEI Wild tuna, aori ika, Hokkaido uni, caviar, ikura and hanaho. Essentially flavorless slop of premium-ish ingredients 2. Hokkaido ankimo, standard simmering served w wasabi and momiji oroshi. Not a great prep, but not bad either 3. Aburi kamasu/kamasu no aburi w jikasei yuzu kosho, tosazu jure (jelly lol) and hanaho. Yuzu kosho and tosazu jelly well made, kamasu left out too long after cooking – got the room temp type of cold if you’re familiar with that. 4. Shirako w ponzu and momiji oroshi, shirako did not have the greatest cook but ponzu sauce is well made 5. Baigai, was not served it for some reason 6. Tako sakura-ni, overly sweet and falling apart a bit. Not that bad but just like sugar sweet 7. Aka amadai owan w matsutake (smelled like the ones from Mt. Shasta), good – soup was of good quality and amadai was cooked properly. Matsutake aroma largely preserved which I was really happy about, it’s been challenging to find that in the Bay 8. Awabi from aomori sakemushi w kimo sauce and ball of shari. Awabi a bit chewier given chef preference but not a bad cook, the actual awabi didn’t taste great and the kimo sauce was even worse. Shari didn’t go super well with the sauce as well sadly 9. Kegani Chawanmushi with black truffle from Burgundy, aroma from truffle was good and Kegani was pretty voluminous. Chawan itself was cooked well, overall pretty good 10. Nigiri started with Kinmedai no aburi from Chiba (choshi?), topped w key lime n light salt. Eh, temp a bit cold (had been rested in the standard box after the searing part). Huge neta vs the tiny shari but not like a big piece of sushi on its own 11. Kuruma ebi from Kagoshima, sizing thing same as above. Meh quality, most live kuruma ebi that comes in SF comes on Friday and needs to be cooked that day. Rest is prepared when they arrived then sorta meted out for service. This was a Saturday so got the precooked ones – was kind of a small kuruma ebi as well without the nice taste some of the good quality small ones will have 12. Buri belly, nice with the nikiri – shari adds almost nothing, kinda tasteless. But honestly this had some pluses so wouldn’t kick it out of bed 13. Kegani w hanaho, hanaho drowned out by an almost kinda funky/mushroomy taste from kegani? But no kanimiso so don’t even know where it’s come from. Think it may be a bit long in the tooth 14. Nodoguro w light key lime, started nice then faded hard 15. Masaba w yakumi, really fishy. Not good kind of fishy. Think they’re tryna keep the shiojime/sujiime light to show off natural flavour, but I think it wasn’t enough 16. Otoro standard nikiri and a bit of salt, shari is bigger now. The neta and nikiri/salt are good together but the shari again is like almost a negative – it tastes like nothing 17. Famous uni hosomaki topped with uni. In the hosomaki is akatsuki and marukita. Outside is some other brands (maruki et al). Gaudy but I’ve had the uni tower at takamitsu so I’m not complaining 18. Ni-anago w tsume temaki, eh 19. Brulee castella Tamago, mostly scallop – eh 20. Akadashi asari miso, bad 21. Miso ice cream + yuzu granita, grape, blueberry and winter melon. Fruit was good, miso ice cream was alright
Extras
1. Tairagai (isobeyaki?) nigiri, awful. Muddy tasting 2. Akami zuke w deep kasari bocho, so so salty
Ren is probably the best of Sunny’s restaurants (Iki, Tancho, Ren, Nagai (closed now) and now Kinsen which I reviewed recently) with 3-4 courses that are okay and sort of approach more traditional sushi (with admittedly some very cosmopolitan flourishes that have made the restaurant very popular with influencers and folks who go to sushi restaurants for uni/truffle/caviar). Most people I’ve seen when I’ve gone were Chinese and service is often almost entirely conducted in Chinese, although they do speak English
With that being said, I probably still wouldn’t go here if not for the review – Ren is really oriented more at folks who may not necessarily actually like sushi in my personal opinion. While it does offer some legitimately fancy ingredients (it’s not one of those places offering black truffle and then skimping out with like discount yunnanese black truffles – the better quality ones from Yunnan are fine but there’s plenty of cheap stuff coming from there that makes its way here and in Europe) I find much of the actual fish were of either subpar quality or handled in a manner that did not pull the most out of them – nigiri that flashed or hit the tongue nicely then almost immediately nose dived, shari that was almost limp and tasteless.
If you like taking photos or videos of dudes making the most crazy uni roll I’ve seen in the Bay – check this place out, you could definitely do worse for those types of places and the food isn’t that bad. The price is going up later in November and I’d honestly skip it at that price point but ymmv.
2 Comments
Ren is famed Bay Area sushi entrepreneur, Sunny Noahs, most popular restaurant and almost by far the second most popular high end sushi restaurant in the area. In a market where many restaurants are struggling to book out appointments more than a week ahead, Ren was able to have months and months booked out (a function of the restaurant choosing to keep their opening price point for a longer time + some hype out the gate off the back of the uni course).
I’ve been to Ren closer to the opening but wanted to see how the restaurants changed as it turns the corner closer to eventually raising its prices in November.
The courses were:
1. Chopped PEI Wild tuna, aori ika, Hokkaido uni, caviar, ikura and hanaho. Essentially flavorless slop of premium-ish ingredients
2. Hokkaido ankimo, standard simmering served w wasabi and momiji oroshi. Not a great prep, but not bad either
3. Aburi kamasu/kamasu no aburi w jikasei yuzu kosho, tosazu jure (jelly lol) and hanaho. Yuzu kosho and tosazu jelly well made, kamasu left out too long after cooking – got the room temp type of cold if you’re familiar with that.
4. Shirako w ponzu and momiji oroshi, shirako did not have the greatest cook but ponzu sauce is well made
5. Baigai, was not served it for some reason
6. Tako sakura-ni, overly sweet and falling apart a bit. Not that bad but just like sugar sweet
7. Aka amadai owan w matsutake (smelled like the ones from Mt. Shasta), good – soup was of good quality and amadai was cooked properly. Matsutake aroma largely preserved which I was really happy about, it’s been challenging to find that in the Bay
8. Awabi from aomori sakemushi w kimo sauce and ball of shari. Awabi a bit chewier given chef preference but not a bad cook, the actual awabi didn’t taste great and the kimo sauce was even worse. Shari didn’t go super well with the sauce as well sadly
9. Kegani Chawanmushi with black truffle from Burgundy, aroma from truffle was good and Kegani was pretty voluminous. Chawan itself was cooked well, overall pretty good
10. Nigiri started with Kinmedai no aburi from Chiba (choshi?), topped w key lime n light salt. Eh, temp a bit cold (had been rested in the standard box after the searing part). Huge neta vs the tiny shari but not like a big piece of sushi on its own
11. Kuruma ebi from Kagoshima, sizing thing same as above. Meh quality, most live kuruma ebi that comes in SF comes on Friday and needs to be cooked that day. Rest is prepared when they arrived then sorta meted out for service. This was a Saturday so got the precooked ones – was kind of a small kuruma ebi as well without the nice taste some of the good quality small ones will have
12. Buri belly, nice with the nikiri – shari adds almost nothing, kinda tasteless. But honestly this had some pluses so wouldn’t kick it out of bed
13. Kegani w hanaho, hanaho drowned out by an almost kinda funky/mushroomy taste from kegani? But no kanimiso so don’t even know where it’s come from. Think it may be a bit long in the tooth
14. Nodoguro w light key lime, started nice then faded hard
15. Masaba w yakumi, really fishy. Not good kind of fishy. Think they’re tryna keep the shiojime/sujiime light to show off natural flavour, but I think it wasn’t enough
16. Otoro standard nikiri and a bit of salt, shari is bigger now. The neta and nikiri/salt are good together but the shari again is like almost a negative – it tastes like nothing
17. Famous uni hosomaki topped with uni. In the hosomaki is akatsuki and marukita. Outside is some other brands (maruki et al). Gaudy but I’ve had the uni tower at takamitsu so I’m not complaining
18. Ni-anago w tsume temaki, eh
19. Brulee castella Tamago, mostly scallop – eh
20. Akadashi asari miso, bad
21. Miso ice cream + yuzu granita, grape, blueberry and winter melon. Fruit was good, miso ice cream was alright
Extras
1. Tairagai (isobeyaki?) nigiri, awful. Muddy tasting
2. Akami zuke w deep kasari bocho, so so salty
Ren is probably the best of Sunny’s restaurants (Iki, Tancho, Ren, Nagai (closed now) and now Kinsen which I reviewed recently) with 3-4 courses that are okay and sort of approach more traditional sushi (with admittedly some very cosmopolitan flourishes that have made the restaurant very popular with influencers and folks who go to sushi restaurants for uni/truffle/caviar). Most people I’ve seen when I’ve gone were Chinese and service is often almost entirely conducted in Chinese, although they do speak English
With that being said, I probably still wouldn’t go here if not for the review – Ren is really oriented more at folks who may not necessarily actually like sushi in my personal opinion. While it does offer some legitimately fancy ingredients (it’s not one of those places offering black truffle and then skimping out with like discount yunnanese black truffles – the better quality ones from Yunnan are fine but there’s plenty of cheap stuff coming from there that makes its way here and in Europe) I find much of the actual fish were of either subpar quality or handled in a manner that did not pull the most out of them – nigiri that flashed or hit the tongue nicely then almost immediately nose dived, shari that was almost limp and tasteless.
If you like taking photos or videos of dudes making the most crazy uni roll I’ve seen in the Bay – check this place out, you could definitely do worse for those types of places and the food isn’t that bad. The price is going up later in November and I’d honestly skip it at that price point but ymmv.
If only someone who’s gone there could tell us.