Sushi trip reports - starting w/ Kiss Seafood in SF

[JaBlue]

I intend to use sushi to try to break my girlfriend's vegetarianism (voluntarily). I will have to take her somewhere real nice so that she will have great-tasting, fresh sushi that will turn her on to fish but at the same time not somewhere absurd that she won't be able to appreciate due to previous inexperience. Ideas?

[john voight]

taken from some site that ranks the "top 100" bay area restaurants:

KABUTO A&S
After being closed for about six months, Sachio Kojima has a new location for his nightly sushi performances -- in a smaller space across the street. He bought the building and his family helps out. Kojima, with the help of his sons, creates the best sushi in the city and mixes in his own inventions, such as foie gras sushi. The best way to order is to ask the chef, and then to order one of the sakes from the impressive list. His efforts are rewarded with lines waiting to get into the cramped but cheerful space.

Prices were 2-10$ (a bit cheap?)

When asked "best sushi in Bay" on a random forum, some guy said in emphatic fassion:

Anzu, Kiss, end of story.

Hana Sushi in Rohnert Park, 45 miles north of the city and Sushi Ran are honorbale mentions. Hell, here is the link;

http://www.chowhound.com/topics/315217
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/398568 (a similar thread)

The only spots I eat Shushi at are one in Burlingame, no idea if it exists anymore, and one in Pasifica on skyline blvd. (for broke ass fools like myslef, unless you want her to dump you, do not take her here). IT is a bang for the buck though. Nippon I think it is called.

Also, I just discovered this;

go to google maps, and in the search map tab (not business or location) type in the code:

Sushi loc: San Francisco, CA

Replace sushi with whatever you are looking for, and replace SF with what ever city you looking for. Pretty cool I guess.

[El Diablo]

All,

Went to Bar Crudo this weekend.

Raw bar with both raw fish preparations and lots of shellfish. They have a small upstairs area they take reservations for and maybe 10 bar seats downstairs that are walkin only. Cool ambience.

We started with the crudo sampler. This was 8 decent sized (bigger than normal sashimi slice) pieces of raw fish with various sauces/garnishes.

The four we had were:

scallops w/ english pea puree, wow, this was incredible.

Fluke w/ spicy aioli sauce. pretty good.

Tuna w/ pineapple sauce. Too sweat, this one didn't work.

Hamachi(? don't remember for sure what this one was) with avocado creme fraiche and peach slices. WOW. This was great.

So, two great ones, one good one, and one that didn't work. Happy with this, any time you push the envelope with flavor combinations, something's bound to not work.

Then we had a lobster salad w/ burrata cheese and heirloom tomatoes. This was REALLY good.

Still a little hungry, so we got a half dungeness crab, which was pretty good, but I still don't really get the whole crab thing. Didn't think it was amazing or anything, I just don't feel like crab tastes all that special in general.

They do a couple of hot entrees every night, but didn't try any.

They have a great selection of Belgian ales. I tried these two:

Brouwerij Het Anker, Gouden Carolus Triple, Belgium - strong, pretty rich taste, loved it.

Popperings Hommel Ale, Belgium - a little lighter, but still really liked it.

I'm not much of a belgian ale connoisseur, hence my weak reviews there.

She forgot about the Hommel and was very late bringing it, but apologized very nicely and didn't charge for it.

Overall, service from hostess and waitress was very good.

Dinner for two was $90 including tax/tip. Probably will get just a little more food next time.

[Irieguy]

I went to Okada at the Wynn last night with The Usher and it was quite impressive. I would definitely recommend it and would probably rate it as the best sushi restaurant in Las Vegas (of which there are surprisingly many.)

The ambience is relaxing, with only bamboo and waterfalls visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and you definitely forget you are on the Vegas Strip while you are dining there.

The service was courteous, but often delayed, which seems to be common in high-end Las Vegas restaurants.

The wine for the evening was a 2004 Bergstrom Pinot Noir which was overpriced but absolutely fantastic. If you like Pinot Noir, you really should drink everything bottled from Willamette Valley Oregon in 2004. It's a worthwhile adventure. Domaine Drouhin and Bergstrom are the two best of the bunch in my opinion, but the vintage was so good that you will find many enjoyable bottles. The Bergstrom was so good we ordered a second bottle without much thought (for 4 of us).

We started with miso soup, edamame, and the signature Okada roll. The roll was made from fresh lobster, avacado, and a special super secret sauce that must be made from chocalate, morphine, and cocaine considering the way it tastes and makes you feel. Wow, it's the best sushi roll evar.

The second course was some Robatayaki. We had bacon-wrapped asparagus, chicken meatballs, hamachi, and scallops. They were all extremely tasty.

Next was some Kobe tataki. We ordered a second order after our first bite.

Next was 6 ounces of Kobe seared to medium. If you imagined what the word "pleasure" would taste like if you could eat it... this would be it.

Time for something cold... jalapeno yellowtail please. This was good, but not quite as good as Nobu's version or even Fix's version for that matter. Still very good, but not as amazing as the rest of the meal.

We may have had a few more cold plates but by this time I was a little fuzzy from the bottle of Bergstrom I'm pretty sure I long-poured for myself and whatever narcotic they put in their Okada sauce.

On the desert menu I counted 5 words that I have never seen before in my life and another word I didn't know. Nougatine is the only one I remember and I told myself I would work it into a sentence today so now I feel like I accomplished something today. We decided to just order the best 4 of the 6 things on the menu according to our waiter and nobody was disappointed. I ended up with donuts and fruit compote and they were delicious.

Tab and tip was a cool K, but $400 of it was the wine, so you could enjoy Okada for less than $200/person with a more reasonable beverage choice. This puts it in-line with Nobu and I would rate Okada slightly better. The atmosphere is worlds better, the kobe is comparable, and I think the best of the menu is better than the best of Nobu's.

If you find yourself in Las Vegas looking for the best in Japanese cuisine, I haven't found anywhere better.

Enjoy,

Irieguy

[Los Feliz Slim]

Went to Sushi Gen in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles last night. I don't know why we strayed from our standard Saturday-night Sushi Go 55, but we did. When we arrived the parking attendant told us 30-40 minute wait, when we got to the restaurant they said an hour and there was a huge collection of people waiting outside. We thought that any sushi special enough to warrant this, especially with Sushi Go 55 right down the street, must be special indeed.

And it was fine. We had salmon, albacore, snapper, spicy tuna hand rolls, eel and avocado roll, and spanish mackeral. All were good, but not better than Sushi Go 55, and certainly did not warrant an hour's wait.

My wife really wants me to mention that when they brought her coffee Mochi they were frozen solid as a rock and not cut in half to help them thaw. So she had to saw them apart with the tiny little fork thingy.

Total including one bottle of unfiltered cold sake and a beer: $109 with tip. Also more expensive than our stand-by. It was fine, but we will not be returning.

[private joker]

[ QUOTE ]
Went to Sushi Gen in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles last night. I don't know why we strayed from our standard Saturday-night Sushi Go 55, but we did. When we arrived the parking attendant told us 30-40 minute wait, when we got to the restaurant they said an hour and there was a huge collection of people waiting outside. We thought that any sushi special enough to warrant this, especially with Sushi Go 55 right down the street, must be special indeed.

And it was fine. We had salmon, albacore, snapper, spicy tuna hand rolls, eel and avocado roll, and spanish mackeral. All were good, but not better than Sushi Go 55, and certainly did not warrant an hour's wait.

My wife really wants me to mention that when they brought her coffee Mochi they were frozen solid as a rock and not cut in half to help them thaw. So she had to saw them apart with the tiny little fork thingy.

Total including one bottle of unfiltered cold sake and a beer: $109 with tip. Also more expensive than our stand-by. It was fine, but we will not be returning.

[/ QUOTE ]

I just went there a couple weeks ago with my girlfriend. She says it's the best sushi in Little Tokyo. I liked it a lot, so maybe she's right, but it didn't blow me away like Katana does.

Also, we went on a weekday at like 3:30-4:00 in the afternoon, so there was no wait.

[Outlaw4033]

Went back to Sushi Coast today. I had the Wild Kenshaw. It's a very well done roll with smoked salmon, crab, cream cheese, and avacado. The cream cheese really set off the roll.

My brother got the Space City Maki. It's a very simple roll with shrimp tempura, crab, smelt roe, and teriyaki.

My dad got the Sushi Coast Maki. It has spicy salmon, crab, avacado, cilantro, fresh jalapeno, spicy sauce, and tempura flakes. It was definatley my favorite dish of the 3. Plenty of kick to it.

[offTopic]

[ QUOTE ]
Sushi Ran, Sausalito (across the Golden Gate Bridge from SF)

[/ QUOTE ]

My wife and I went here last Saturday, sans reservation. We had to wait about 45 minutes for a table, which I knew was going to be tough on the wallet since we'd played golf and hadn't eaten all day.

I don't want to bore everyone with a full, detailed review, but the highlights of the meal were the inada (baby yellowtail) nigiri. Like hamachi, only better.

The shiro ebi (raw bay-sized shrimp) was surprisingly good...it was part of the omakase, and we ended up getting another order.

The king sake was also very good, as was the toro.

A downer was the awabi (abalone) nigiri...I thought it was overdone, and really could have been just an ordinary clam or squid, even.

Kumomoto oysters were tasty and well-prepared, but small.

As the Masked Man said, the "tempura tower" is a great dessert, so if you go, save room!

Similar to Nobu, I didn't find the sushi to be light years ahead of places like Ariake in SF or Echigo in LA, so I would recommend if you go to keep an eye on the "special" items on the menu, even if they are a bit expensive.

Things like this are what differentiate places like this from your favorite sushi restaurants, and given that Sushi Ran that gets its fish from Tsukiji Market, you might not get many opportunities to try some rare/oddball variety of fish.

[2Fast]

pretty good sushi - the restaurant itself is really what makes the restaurant I think in that it's a bit more grandiose than most of the other sushi places in NYC (ouside Megu). Entranceway is pretty cool with sort of this big flowing 50+ foot tapestry-thing outside before the doorway and then once you enter through the sliding glass doors you look straight out at a pretty big dining room with steps down to a downstairs bar (that has kind of a cool translucent bar countertop with leafs embossed inside). The main room is a bit sparesely decorated but very high ceilings, off-white color throughout and interesting woodwork on the counters/tables make it feel pretty open.

This is a fairly decent-sized sushi place with I'd guess over 35 tables including some long ones for parties of like 10 or more and a very long wraparound sushi bar (where we ate) that goes around the open-air kitchen. One kinda cool (or not cool, depending on you taste) is the part of the sushi bar where we ate where you have to take off you shoes and literally sort of climb down into the chair which from an elevated position. They take your shoes - but leave you with slippers if you have to go to the bathroom (which I thought was kind of cool).

The sushi is very good and not overly expensive (well for NYC). We started out with a salmon ravioli I think for like $16 which was a pretty good starter. Then we had a $23 Sea Bass entree which was great, followed by a selection of sushi and sashmi (bluefin, toro, yellowtail, king crab, maki rolls, etc.) which was good if not great. Entire bill came to "only" $145 which for two guys in NYC aint' all that bad (my buddy had 2 mojitos and I have two beers).

On the whole it's a great place with very good sushi and excellent modern Japanese ambiance, in not a little bit on the minimalist side. I recommend, for novelty effect if nothing else.

[BretWeir]

Just got back from a two-week trip to Japan and had some outstanding sushi (unsuprisingly). The highlight was an early morning trip to Tsukiji Fish Market, which moves over 2,000 tons of seafood a day -- compare this with Fulton in NYC, which moves 115 tons a year.

The place was immense. Like, huge hanger-type buildings taking up multiple city blocks with hundreds of wholesale vendors. And that doesn't even cover the other huge buildings where they do the daily 6 a.m. tuna auction and other live auctions.



Apart from the standard fish, there were piles and piles of weird sea creatures: live sea urchins, sea cucumbers, foot-long prawns, and multiple kinds of squid and octopus.



Right outside the entrance to the wholesale market, there are about six concrete buildings with retail stalls (selling chef's knives, dried seaweed, and who knows what else) and sushi shops. We stopped at Daiwa Sushi for breakfast; I'm told that there's usually a big line, but there was only about a 5-minute wait at 7 a.m. Here's the outside:



It's a tiny place, with two counters seating about 10 people each and three chefs behind each counter. For 3,200 yen (about $30), you get the set meal of eight pieces of sushi, a piece of egg custard, six pieces of tuna roll, miso soup and green tea. (A big bottle of Asahi beer is extra, but apparently obligatory at breakfast, judging from the other customers. I didn't argue.) No plates; the sushi's served right on the counter in front of you.



The sushi included toro, yellowtail, shrimp, sea urchin, mackerel, white toro and eel. It was unifomly amazing -- I've had sushi at Nobu and a couple of other top U.S. places, and nothing touched this in terms of freshness. It's coming from the market a block away and a lot of it was probably alive a half hour before it was served. There was hardly any "fishy" taste -- just a nice, clean sea taste to everthing. I've never been able to stomach uni before, but this stuff was delicious. I know it's a cliche to say that something "melted in your mouth", but the eel literally did -- no need to chew. Even the soup was great -- a big piece of fish floating in the middle, along with about two dozen tiny clams about the half the size of your thumbnail. Here's a close-up of some of the fare (should have taken more, but I was too busy eating):