Random grocery store dinner – Safeway

Posted on January 10, 2012 by vicentesf

Sometimes I’m so tired from a full day of work followed by a gym workout, that I really don’t want to cook or even go to a restaurant for food. That’s when I swing by Safeway on my way home and grab some cheap and “somewhat” tasty food items. It’s not the best, but it hits the spot and doesn’t break the bank!
Safeway, San Francisco

Rock ‘n roll sushi. The sushi at Safeway isn’t of very good quality, but it’s passable. Just douse it in more soy sauce and it’ll go down fairly easily, lol!

Maguro nigiri

Unagi nigiri

Sake nigiri

Mixed olives. You can’t go wrong with marinated olives!

Assorted temaki (hand rolls) – Tenka Japanese Restaurant

Posted on December 29, 2011 by vicentesf

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 hand roll Tenka Japanese Restaurant

Road runner – tuna, salmon, avocado and cucumber. $2.95 for happy hour

Spicy tako hand roll Tenka Japanese Restaurant

Spicy tako – octopus with spicy mayonnaise. $2.95 for happy hour

Cajun hand roll Tenka Japanese Restaurant

Cajun – fried oyster, avocado and cucumber with spicy mayonnaise. $2.95 for happy hour

New York hand roll Tenka Japanese Restaurant

New York – shrimp, fish eggs, avocado and cucumber. $2.95 for happy hour

Negima – Tenka Japanese Restaurant

Posted on December 28, 2011 by vicentesf

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.

Assorted sushi – Tenka Japanese Restaurant

Posted on December 28, 2011 by vicentesf

This place is awesome for happy hour! The prices are great and the sushi doesn’t suck. You always have to be a little weary of super cheap sushi, but this place serves above decent sushi at rock bottom prices. That’s awesome in my book! You can get a nice large meal for only a few bucks. Of the sushi below, the scallop nigiri was my favorite!
Tenka Japanese Restaurant, San Mateo

Hotatagai nigiri Tenka Japanese Restaurant

Hotatagai nigiri (scallop). $1.25 happy hour

Unagi nigiri (fresh water eel). $1.25 happy hour

Hamachi nigiri Tenka Japanese Restaurant

Hamachi nigiri (yellow tail). $1.25 happy hour

Sauteed scallops – Nombe

Posted on December 10, 2011 by vicentesf

With uni butter and baby beets. $15
Nombe, San Francisco

Omg, this was such a rich dish! And perhaps, not in a good way. The uni butter, while delicious, was SO heavy. There’s not a lot of it on the plate, but it completely overpowered everything else. To be fair the beets were delicious and the scallops were cooked well.

This dinner was very disappointing. The service was horrendous and the timing between dishes was atrocious! The food was just ok overall and not really worth the price. I don’t think I’ll go back.

It was very dark in the restaurant and halfway through, they decided to turn the lights even lower. Therefore, I wasn’t able to photograph everything but here are the remaining pics I was able to snap before it the darkness made it impossible to take more.

Grilled Kurobuta pork belly, mizuna, jicama, yuzo kosho dressing. $10
This was the best dish of the night (although it’s very hard to see, lol). The meat was tender, flavorful and perfectly cooked. I also loved the mizuna salad on the side!

Persimmon cosmo shochu cocktail. $5 happy hour
This was ok. I’m glad it was discounted for happy hour otherwise I would have been more disappointed.

Nipponito – mint, lime, rice shochu. $8
Very sour!

Rainbow Roll – Kama Sushi

Posted on December 7, 2011 by vicentesf

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.

Spicy hamachi roll – Kama Sushi

Posted on December 7, 2011 by vicentesf

6 pieces yellowtail and cucumber roll with toasted sesame. $4.50 happy hour
Kama Sushi, San Francisco

Wow, I loved these delicious bites! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spicy hamachi roll on a sushi menu, and while these weren’t at all spicy, they were very tasty. And you can’t beat the happy hour price! I enjoyed that the hamachi wasn’t chopped to a pulp – they still had a great solid texture. Noms!

Rainbow roll and spicy hamachi roll.

Gyoza – Kama Sushi

Posted on December 6, 2011 by vicentesf

Japanese fried pot stickers with pork. $4.95 happy hour
Kama Sushi, San Francisco

Combine hot, fried gyoza with the salty, vinegary dipping sauce and you have a winner! Gyoza has to be one of my favorite items to order at Japanese places, and these were very good especially for the discounted happy hour price! Gotta love Kama Sushi!

Large Sapporo beer. $3.50 happy hour

My worst dining experience in Palm Springs!

Posted on December 4, 2011 by vicentesf

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

Super spicy roll – Katana-Ya

Posted on November 20, 2011 by vicentesf

Spicy tuna and cucumber roll topped with more chili sauce, sesame and green onions. $6.50
Katana-Ya, San Francisco

Why are “spicy” rolls never really that spicy at Japanese restaurants? This roll was more sweet than spicy to me. I think it had some good flavors but lacked the spice. C’mon guys, gimme some heat!

BBQ pork ramen – Katana-Ya

Posted on November 20, 2011 by vicentesf

Ramen in a soy broth with 4 pieces of BBQ pork, bamboo shoots, seaweed, and scallions. $11
Katana-Ya, San Francisco

This char siu ramen is on the 7×7 Big Eat List 2011, but frankly, I wasn’t impressed. Perhaps I’m just not a ramen expert, but the I didn’t find anything exceptional about it. My favorite part was the bamboo shoots and the pork was pretty tender, but I think the soup was too rich for my taste.

7×7 Magazine’s The Big Eat San Francisco: 100 Things to Eat + Drink Before You Die – 2010, 2011, 2012

Shima aji nigiri – Tokyo Go Go

Posted on October 19, 2011 by vicentesf

Spanish white mackerel slices over sushi rice, with pickled ginger and wasabi. $6.50
Tokyo Go-Go, San Francisco

This was on their nightly special list so we decided to try it. The waitress told us it was Spanish white mackerel. I’m not sure if that’s correct because Googling “shima aji” comes up with many different results, none of which are for Spanish white mackerel. This just adds to my frustration with the use of common names in communicative nomenclature, but that’s for another blog – lol! Whatever we ate, I really liked it! The shima aji wasn’t fishy tasting at all. It had quite a firm texture and a mellow flavor. I loved the peach color that gradated to a bright pinkish red.

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