Asian SF (part 2)

One of the key things I wanted to try in SF was the sushi, and I can even call it research for work! SF is overrun with sushi places, reminded me of Hong Kong where there is almost one at every street corner, many of questionable quality. The one we went to, however, turned out had a Michelin star a few years back, and I took it as a good sign that they could only offer us seats at the sushi bar when we walked in without a reservation.

Sushi Ran in Sausalito is in quite a sleepy neighbourhood, Sausalito being the one stop north of the Golden Gate bridge that tourists manage to get to. There is an adjoining sake and wine bar next door, and the layout of the restaurant itself is pretty tiny, dominated by the large sushi bar. Having spent quite a lot of time examining sushi bars recently, I was really quite impressed with this one. The display was pretty standard for Japanese restaurants, but the chefs behind the bar all showed very good knowledge of their product, and just chatty enough (thankfully none of the American false over-friendliness). Our chef was hilariously named Garth, but with an appropriately Japanese sounding surname:

Their sake list was also pretty impressive, didn't count exactly but probably about 30 different sakes, many available by the carafe. It is still interesting to see how restaurants present their sake lists, many I've seen, including this one, actually put a little picture of the label on the menu, which strikes me as both a little useless and a little tacky. Never mind, at least the tasting notes were pretty good, and we opted for a sake I recognised: dewazakura oka, which was fragrant and light. The way their served it meant that getting the table all wet was a bit inevitable:

Sushi Ran boasts that they ship a lot of their fish directly from Tsukiji Market in Tokyo, but Garth explained that because it was Golden Week in Japan, their shipment had been delayed, so the selection was quite limited on the day we visited. This was a shame, because we were comparing the sushi in SF vs. London (he came to do an extensive visit last year), and one of the things he complained was the lack of variety in London, but the selection that day in SF didn't really show me what I was missing.

The uni was so good and fresh and creamy that we ordered another round. It was a good sign of their freshness that they ran out really soon into the evening:

Monkfish liver (ankimo) you don't really see on the menu in London (although Chisou has it as an appetiser), and it was very good. I'm all into my creamy nigiris as you can see:

Their hot food impressed me less, with some quite steep prices and variable food. Their tofu tasting was an interesting concept, with tofu 3 ways, but only the usual agedashi tofu was any good. The top one was disturbingly cold and made me squirt juice across the table, and the one with chilli at the bottom was disappointingly bland. And this is a tofu fan telling you that tofu is bland!:

Fil had never had black cod miso before, so we went for that. Pretty good version it was too, fish was meltingly soft, but at a very steep price, one of the most expensive 'mains' they had on the menu, tiny portion size:

We also sampled some of the crazy maki that Californians are known for. They didn't actually have California roll itself, but all sorts of maki with a similar idea. Their spicy tuna roll was so so, with the spice coming from the sprinkles on top rather than within, but we really liked their miso scallop roll, again, creaminess always wins me over:

We had also asked for a crispy salmon skin roll, but after being told that it would take 30 minutes and it was towards the end of our meal, we asked for their recommendation instead. Garth mentioned that they sell around 10,000 of their crunch maki every year (we worked out that it was just about believable at around 30 of these rolls a day), which includes eel, avocado, spicy crab, and shrimp, and as you can see, lashings of sauce on top:

For me, there was far far too much going on in this roll, with so much stuff inside that it collapses as soon as you put it on your sharing plate, so you end up eating it in pieces anyway. I guess it is this style of sushi which is popular in California though, if they sell so many of it, which I think is a shame, particularly as I've just looked up their sushi menu online and looked at how many types of fish they normally are able to serve. We never did get a chance to try any more sushi whilst I was in SF, but pretty impressed if this is the standard they set.