Hearts of romaine, avocado, parmesan, diced tomatoes and red onions, herb croutons, house-made Caesar dressing. $8.95
Cafe Flore, San Francisco
This was a fresh and delicious salad! You can see that they put a large avocado half on top – that’s a lot of avocado, noms! The salad was dressed perfectly with Caesar dressing (not too heavily), and the diced tomatoes and red onion helped to brighten the flavors. I would definitely order this again!
Tortilla chips topped with braised pork, black beans, cheese, salsa fresca, guacamole and sour cream.
La Tortilla, San Francisco
So the food here isn’t the best Mexican food you’re gonna eat in the city but it’s convenient, fast, affordable, and they serve large portions. Their al pastor has decent flavor and is sufficiently tender. Everything else is pretty standard, but I do like their salsa bar. I tend to drown everything in extra salsa, hehe!
I think I’m undecided whether I truly like hand rolls or not. It’s just a lot of seawead to deal with and these were chewy and hard to chew through, making it hard to neatly eat the rolls. They do stuff quite a lot of filling in these hand rolls and you don’t have to use chopsticks, which is great for incompetent users like myself. The spicy tako temaki was my favorite!
Tenka Japanese Restaurant, San Mateo CA
Road runner – tuna, salmon, avocado and cucumber. $2.95 for happy hour
Spicy tako – octopus with spicy mayonnaise. $2.95 for happy hour
Cajun – fried oyster, avocado and cucumber with spicy mayonnaise. $2.95 for happy hour
New York – shrimp, fish eggs, avocado and cucumber. $2.95 for happy hour
Sliced beef rolled with scallion and avocado. $2.95 for happy hour
Tenka Japanese Restaurant, San Mateo
This appetizer read better than it looked once it arrived. Perhaps it was the lighting, but it looked so unappetizing. I’m not even sure what the sauce was on top. I can’t say that I remember what these tasted like, but they were cheap!
Asahi beer.
8 pieces snow crab, avocado roll topped with tuna, salmon, ebi, hamachi, tai and avocado. $11.95
Kama Sushi, San Francisco
The rainbow roll is perfect for the indecisive person like me because you essentially get an assortment of sashimi on top of a California roll. Yay! The fish quality at Kama was great and the services was very friendly and attentive. Went there for happy hour and will definitely return!
Complimentary edamame.
Happy Sushi Ro Ba Ta, Palm Springs
FAIL!!! This has possibly been my worst dining experience to date, no joke! We arrived a little after 5 on a Saturday and there were 3 tables taken outside and a few people at the sushi bar. Regardless, after getting our drinks and the extremely sad Dynamite Bites, it still took 45 minutes to finally get our sushi! Way too long!
Some food highlights:
The Dynamite Bites ($5) are billed as crabmeat baked with dynamite sauce. Sounds delicious, right? Wrong! In actuality, this abomination is a pile of imitation crabmeat on a scrap of aluminum foil with an indistinguishable sauce on top. They do provide some lemon wedges with it, no doubt to kill any lingering bacteria on this laughable heap!
The spicy tuna roll ($6 happy hour) is huge! Awesome, right? Wrong! No one wants to eat more of a crappy roll. There was enough rice on this thing to feed a small Japanese prefecture! And the tuna wasn’t spicy at all, but it was mutilated to the consistency of Whiskas cat food.
And how about some avian bird flu with your sushi?!!! The outside tables are conveniently situated under an eave where a menagerie of feathery locals hang out to take their dumps. Once we heard the rain of bird poop showering the hibiscus plant beside our table, and saw well-aimed poo bombs land on our table and splatter onto our food and my arm, we called it quits!
And no, our food was NOT comped! I wanna barf just recalling that catastrophic experience.
Note: Although they overtly display a happy hour checklist menu at the front, they sneakily hand you a normal checklist when you’re seated. So be sure to request a happy hour list.
Or save yourself some time and bird flu vaccination costs and don’t go there at all!
Other forgettable dishes:
Samurai Rock sake cocktail. $5
Albacore nigiri. Surprise, it comes seared! No doubt to kill anything on the outside of this not-so-fresh cut of fishy fish. $3.95 happy hour
Mackerel nigiri. I’ll admit that this wasn’t bad. $3.75 happy hour
Eel and avocado roll. Tasted ok until it was splattered with bird poo! $8 happy hour
Edamame. $3
Asahi beer. $4.50
Every part of this appetizer probably came out of either a can or bag, but I still liked it and definitely ate more than my share. There’s just something about chips with salsa and guacamole that keeps you eating regardless of the quality. Or maybe I’m just a pig! Either way, I enjoyed these and would order them again in a quick second. You definitely get lots of it! $8
The Ramp, San Francisco
Spicy crab, cucumber, avocado, gobo, lightly seared suzuki, sliced chiles, chili aioli, tobiko, and scallions. $14.25
Tokyo Go-Go, San Francisco
Wow, this roll was frickin’ amazing! I loved the heat from all the spicy components, and it looked pretty cool too. I thought I would experience Montezuma’s revenge afterward, but I didn’t – hehe! The lightly seared sea bass tasted great and had a great texture. The chili aioli was so flavorful and I loved the pale yellow color of it. The sliced chiles added extra heat and flavor. Not sure I could really distinguished the gobo (burdock root), but I actually didn’t know what it was when I ordered the roll. I will definitely order this delicious roll again!
Super burrito with soft flour tortilla filled with grilled steak, rice, beans, fresh tomatoes, onions, cilantro, salsa, cheese, sour cream, and avocado. $6.25
El Farolito, San Franciso
Like most Mission burritos, this one from El Farolito is ginormous (and quite delicious if I may add)! The carne asada was tender and flavorful, and the other ingredients are evenly portioned. They don’t over-fill the burrito with rice like some other taquerias. The salsa, however, was SO frickin’ salty! It pretty much destroyed my taste buds and ruined several bites of the burrito. I immediately stopped using more once I figured out that it was the salty offender, lol! If you plan on tackling this huge burrito, save your appetite or stow half for later!
7×7 Magazine’s The Big Eat San Francisco: 100 Things to Eat + Drink Before You Die – 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
Sushi roll with bbq eel, avocado, and topped with tobiko and unagi sauce.
Crazy Sushi, San Francisco
Like most people, when I first started eating sushi I tended to stick with the rolls containing cooked items like rock ‘n rolls and California rolls because they were easier to stomach than the crazy, raw nigiri or sashimi (it doesn’t even have rice!). And I continue to say, “There’s nothing wrong with that.” I still enjoy ordering rock ‘n rolls because I simply love unagi! I also order unagi nigiri because bbq eel is delicious and the unagi sauce is an added bonus. I’ve since become more adventurous in sushi land – ordering more and more raw items, but I still take comfort and enjoy my inauthentic rolls. A word of advice: Nobody likes a sushi snob!
Mixed lettuces with Chioggia beets, avocado, toast and a tarragon vinaigrette. $13
Bar Agricole, San Francisco
This dish was absolutely beautiful with the pinkish red beets, green lettuces and avocado, pale vinaigrette, and dark toast. I didn’t know what a Chioggia beet was, but apparently Chioggia is a coastal town near Venice and the beets have concentric white and pink stripes before they’re cooked. They tasted great! Not sure where the mixed lettuces were though. There was only one type of green, and it appeared to be some type of cress.
8 piece roll with spicy tuna, avocado, and topped with a seaweed salad.
Crazy Sushi, San Francisco
When a sushi joint names a roll after San Francisco, I expect it to be amazing. This one didn’t blow my mind, but I did enjoy it. What can I say, I’m a sucker for spicy tuna, and the seaweed salad on top freshened it up and had a nice texture. I’ve been to Crazy Sushi before and I wasn’t impressed, but this time around they surprised me. All the sushi we had was fresh and distinct. And you can’t beat the price! Will definitely return if the quality remains high.
Here’s the assorted sushi we ordered. It not only tasted good, but I think that it looks good too.
Vittle Monster 