Tag Archives: san francisco

Omakase! (Pictures + thoughts)

Last Saturday, I had dinner at Omakase. We did the Yamato Omakase: 2 appetizers, 2 sashimis, 12 nigiri, 1 yakimono and 1 owan.

I didn’t take great notes (or photos, really) while eating, so my descriptions are pretty vague…

Ball of fish over rice. One mouthful of nom.

Smoked some-sort of fish (trout, I think?) marinated with tomatoes

Sashimi! with fresh wasabi. Lobster on the right.

Japanese abalone with abalone liver sauce. These abalone are much more flavorful than the abalone I’ve had recently at other Japanese restaurants. Also, wonderful sauce. Even when eaten off of chopsticks.

Lobster and geoduck sashimi. I really like geoduck sashimi. I wonder if I can do this myself at home…

akamatsu, black sea perch

hokkaido sea scallop. zomg, I generally don’t like scallops, but this one was all sorts of creamy and delicious.

hirame something cured with kelp. (Japanese fluke)

alaskan wild king salmon. i love salmon, and this one was amazing.

golden big eye snapper. This one was torched a little bit before serving. I’m not a huge fan of skin-on nigiri

Marinated tuna. Pretty good. Fatty but not super fatty.

Hokkaido uni with house cured ikura (over rice). I found the ikura a little salty, but the Hokkaido uni was amazing — no fishiness at all, and very creamy.

otoro.

puri. lightly smoked wild yellowtail. interesting, and smoky. (surprise)

aji. Japanese horse mackrel. Skin on, not a huge fan. A little fishy — good, but not my type of fish.

Japanese mackrel with caramelized sugar. Once again, not a huge fan of skin-on, but the caramelized sugar made this bite really interesting. And it magically paired pretty well.

otoro, slightly torched. NOM NOM NOM. How can you go wrong with otoro? Additionally, I really liked the slight sear — made it seem even more fatty.

tamago. A soft and custardy tamago — much lighter than most tamagos.

Wagyu beef, brocollini, japanese mayo, peppercorn sauce and truffle salt. I was so excited to eat this that the picture is a blurry mess. It was, not surprisingly, delicious — but a slightly too-large portion for me, after all that fish. I couldn’t handle much more rich food.

Lobster and mushroom broth. I don’t think I had reasonable judgement at this point in the meal. I would have preferred a lighter broth at this point.

Overall — the food was great (Even for the types of fish I generally don’t like) and it was a fun experience to sit at the counter and see the chef in front of you prepare your food. However, for $200 a person, I think it’s a little steep. I’d happily do the shorter menu ($150) if I could pick which nigiri. Sign me up to eat the salmon, tunas & uni again.

Awesome Sandwiches

Catching up on my post backlog — from Saturday two weeks ago (August 9th):

Sandwiches from Rhea’s Deli. Korean beef on the left, fried chicken on the right. Probably the best fried chicken sandwich I’ve ever had, also the hugest.

Followed by an Intro to Arduino class at Noisebridge. I learned to solder!

Tartine’s Frangipane Croissant

A cross-section of the best croissant ever.
That’s all.

Shamiq and I stopped by yesterday, and also picked up a raspberry chocolate croissant. They don’t make them often, and I suppose it’s probably a seasonal thing. I hadn’t even realized Tartine made seasonal items (other than the fruit with their bread pudding).

BUT NOW I KNOW.

Must go at all times of the year! In reality though, the almond croissant is better than the raspberry chocolate, but I’m not a big fan of chocolate croissants in general. I find that the chocolate is too heavy compared to the light buttery flavor of the croissant.

Lazy Bear (last, last week)

Maybe I did a little too much post processing here. Candied kumquats filled with foie. AMAZING. I could eat buckets of these. Okay, I’d get sick. Maybe not. Three is a great number.

Artichokes, black trumpets and guinea fowl.

Thinly shaved celery root over crab bodies and claws. I liked the crab and the celery root separately, but not together. (Or well, the celery drowned out the crab when eaten together)

Thinly sliced Monterey abalone with mushrooms in gruyere. I think its hard to dislike things baked in cheese. But I do love abalone.

Veal, loin and belly. Served with endive, almonds and deliciousness. Including radish flowers and broccoli flowers. (Wonder what volunteers do? We pick the flowers!)

Rainbow of citrus, served with ginger milk curd (this was especially delicious, but unphotogenic) and dehydrated angel food cake. Little wood sorrel leaves & ginger threads. (Picking wood sorrel leaves is a volunteer activity…)

Treats! Jellies, puffs, biscuits (with honey and wood sorrel flowers).

As always, Lazy Bear was delicious. And volunteering was fun. AND we took home parisian gnocchi and beef tartare.

Rebel Within (at last)

At last! Months after doing science to make them myself, I had Craftsman & Wolves‘ Rebel Within today!

I wish it was served warm. But it was pretty good!

Belly Burgers

Now that I’ve left the land of composed salads and everything-buffet, I’ve eaten something I’ve never tried before — a pork belly burger! It was quite tasty, though I felt like I was eating a less seasoned sausage. I also split a chicken burger, which was surprisingly juicy and flavorful — I wonder if it’s a mix of dark and white meat? Maybe with some skin or chicken fat thrown in?

Food at Sift is a combo of ordering in and catering. It’s proven to be quite tasty, and I think I’m eating less than I was at Google. Less choices means fewer piles of food! Not sure about healthier though.

Rich Table, Part II

Olives

Sardine Chips

Porcini Donuts

Brandade, Chicken Skin

Asparagus and chicken liver on flatbread

Lamb sausage with a sour orange sauce

Chicken giblet sausage and dandelion greens

Truffles. And butter.

White chocolate begniets

Caramelized sugar chocolate cake, jasmine rice icecream, kimquats

This is what happens when you ask your dad to take a picture of you.

Thoughts? Once again, the donuts were fantastic. The pastas, which I didn’t try many of last time, were mixed. The truffle one was delicious… as truffles tend to be. All the pasta noodley bits themselves are pretty good, but the chicken pasta was on the salty side… the lamb pasta was unusual, but I liked it (sourish pasta sauce?). My dad thought it was gross.

The dessert begniets were surprisingly unairy, given how good the porcini donuts are. The caramelized sugar chocolate cake was well flavored and I really liked the different textures — cake, toasted rice, icecream, kumquats.

Lers Ros

This last weekend, during one of our rushed Disposable Film Fest lunches, Patrici and I stumbled upon Lers Ros. I’ve read about it over and over, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Frankly, I thought it was disappointing. I can see why it gets rave reviews — everything is very well cooked, the beef is tender, the egg bits in the Pad See Ew aren’t over cooked… But the flavors were lacking. Perhaps it’s what we ordered, but I suspect not. I’ve had tastier Pad See Ew and Sauteed Beef (I forgot what they called it) in Berkeley, much less in Thailand. Disappointed. :(

Disposable Film Fest

This weekend, Patrici and I attended a film making workshop as part of the Disposable Film Fest 2013. We watched a bunch of videos and had a group project! I expected the workshop to be much more quackery… but it was pretty fun. As usual though, I took more pictures than I did video. Surprise!

It was hosted by the Bold Italic at their office in San Francisco. Their lobby has a cool sign. Unfortunately, my lens was not wide enough to capture the whole “San Francisco.”

Our shoes, because we’re silly like that.

We got some Schulzies bread puddding after lunch. That stuff is delicious. We tasted some samples and settled on the caramel, with chocolate chips. I should work on making bread pudding…

After the workshop, I had time to kill and walked around the area and stumbled upon Smitten Icecream. Their blood orange and pistachio shortbread icecream was amazing. Their ice cream making gizmo is pretty neat too… but the liquid nitrogen smoke plus the glare of the happy afternoon sun makes for some pretty bad photos.

So here’s my icecream, as I hold it, standing in a corner. It’s a good thing San Francisco is far away or I’d eat more of this and end up ice cream-scoop shaped.

Izakaya Yuzuki

I had dinner at Izakaya Yuzuki last night. It’s my third attempt at booking a table and making plans… and this time it happened! Overall, the meal was light and the dishes were interesting, but I felt like the menu wasn’t large enough and the food was unique but generally underwhelming. I ordered all the things I was interested in, but it wasn’t quite enough food, so we had to order some other dishes.

Disposable chopsticks ftw. Also, they have valet parking if you ask. It’s a secret.

I’m not sure I really understand this “koji” thing…

Housemade tofu. Best with a pinch of salt.

Seasonal veggies. From the left, yam with sesame sauce, asparagus and a slightly spicy burdock root.

Firefly squid over pickled cucumber and seaweed. A little fishy, but one of my favorites of the night.

Beef and tendons. Fatty and underseasoned.

Chicken meatball skewers. Not bad, nothing special.

Yuba and uni chawan mushi. I love chawan mushi. :3

Fried seasonal veggies. Not bad, but somehow I think it’s slightly underfried. Not as crisp as I’d expect?

Karaage. I’d read about this dish and was disappointed. I’ve found better karaage without too much difficulty.

Abalone sashimi. From the right, the frilly bits deep fried, liver mixed with soy and the muscle, thin sliced raw. The thin slices dipped in the liver mixture were great — the crisp raw shellfish and the rich salty sauce.

Seasonal rice — clams and tobiko. I’m not sure what they did to this rice to make it special, but it was pretty good. I could see eating a bowl of this as a rice heavy meal.

Ginger sorbet. One of the most memorable parts of the meal — a ginger sorbet that seems barely sweetened and has the throat-attacking spice of raw ginger. Pretty awesome.

Things I would order again:
Firefly squid
Abalone Sashimi
Ginger sorbet
Maybe the chawan mushi and rice

raccoon*

adventures of a cosmic procyonid