I enjoy Californios. I think I’m a little harsher on western fine dining places given the sheer expense (no matter how much I get it, it’s tough to swallow the prices lol) and my past work history but Californios is one of those places I still enjoy coming to every so often. I do think the portions have shrunk a bit and the value on offer is a bit worse now but that’s pretty much everywhere if we’re being honest – input costs have gone up a lot beyond even just sourcing.
I’ve always encountered solid to great execution at Californios with a real eye to detail and well thought out dishes. There’s always at least 1-2 courses I’m very impressed by with the rest of the meal setting a very good baseline. The person I was getting dinner with agreed that while they weren’t super happy with the value we were getting and we kinda missed older fine dining, the actual food itself was very solid.
With Fu Hui Hua raising prices (still very reasonable just not like a borderline criminal deal you were getting before + their sake menu is some of the best pricing I’ve ever seen in the states) I can more reasonably branch out to new restaurants. I think the big places I need to go to this year are Cyrus and Naides. I just don’t have a car so I’m remiss to go anywhere super far and I haven’t liked Filipino food when I’ve tried it including Kasama. I wanna do enclos again too.
NoodleThings
Oh unrelated – if anyone is in Tokyo on March 20th, I’m looking for a +1 to a pretty difficult to book restaurant called Tou. I believe it’s booked out til July n the reservations usually go reasonably quick. If you’re interested, lmk
rsvandy
Weirdly enough, this looks very similar to a meal I had here in September 2023. I think they removed one course which was a lemon sorbet dish before the tacos. Back then, I felt like it was way too much food, but sounds like the portions are smaller now.
I’m kind of shocked that the menu looks almost identical outside of that one plate with the desserts. When did you go? I felt like the meal looked a lot different from recent posts from other people.
hailhail
What’s up with the disposable coffee cup in several of the pictures? Seems … wildly out-of-place.
5 Comments
I enjoy Californios. I think I’m a little harsher on western fine dining places given the sheer expense (no matter how much I get it, it’s tough to swallow the prices lol) and my past work history but Californios is one of those places I still enjoy coming to every so often. I do think the portions have shrunk a bit and the value on offer is a bit worse now but that’s pretty much everywhere if we’re being honest – input costs have gone up a lot beyond even just sourcing.
I’ve always encountered solid to great execution at Californios with a real eye to detail and well thought out dishes. There’s always at least 1-2 courses I’m very impressed by with the rest of the meal setting a very good baseline. The person I was getting dinner with agreed that while they weren’t super happy with the value we were getting and we kinda missed older fine dining, the actual food itself was very solid.
With Fu Hui Hua raising prices (still very reasonable just not like a borderline criminal deal you were getting before + their sake menu is some of the best pricing I’ve ever seen in the states) I can more reasonably branch out to new restaurants. I think the big places I need to go to this year are Cyrus and Naides. I just don’t have a car so I’m remiss to go anywhere super far and I haven’t liked Filipino food when I’ve tried it including Kasama. I wanna do enclos again too.
Oh unrelated – if anyone is in Tokyo on March 20th, I’m looking for a +1 to a pretty difficult to book restaurant called Tou. I believe it’s booked out til July n the reservations usually go reasonably quick. If you’re interested, lmk
Weirdly enough, this looks very similar to a meal I had here in September 2023. I think they removed one course which was a lemon sorbet dish before the tacos. Back then, I felt like it was way too much food, but sounds like the portions are smaller now.
I’m kind of shocked that the menu looks almost identical outside of that one plate with the desserts. When did you go? I felt like the meal looked a lot different from recent posts from other people.
What’s up with the disposable coffee cup in several of the pictures? Seems … wildly out-of-place.
I’m more a fan of Mr. Wang’s Wild Willy, myself.