My last day in San Francisco turned into a “use up all your Groupons” night out with my roomie, Jen. Our first stop was Sudachi Sushi. I had read the lukewarm Yelp reviews beforehand and did not have high expectations for food quality or service. Comments such as “I wish I could rate this a 0.” and “not AWFUL, but it’s really not very good” don’t really get me excited.
The food definitely lived up (down?) to its reputation. The menu had hundreds of items, everything from sushi rolls to burritos to hamburgers. They obviously hadn’t heard the saying, ‘Do one thing and do it well.’
We started the meal with tuna tartare. I can’t really evaluate the dish, as it came so smothered in mayonnaise that I couldn’t taste the tuna at all.
We also decided to be adventurous and get uni shooters. What came was a horrible muddle of vegetables and ponzu with a little bit of too old uni. The quail egg promised in the menu was nowhere to be seen.
I ended up fishing out the uni and ignoring the rest of the shooter:
The sushi rolls were huge. The size was deceiving, as there was a 10:1 rice:fish ratio. Jen and I ended up pushing the fish out of the rolls with our chopsticks and eating just the fish. The small bites of chewy, old tuna was hardly worth the effort. Here are the leftovers:
The only nice thing I can say about Sudachi is that the service was attentive. I would say excellent, except that we kept sending back half-eaten dishes and mounds of sushi rice and the waitress did not once ask how the food was. I have a feeling it is because she didn’t want to know the answer.
Our second stop was Candybar for dessert. Our experience there was wonderful in every way. The menu is exclusively desserts and sweet cocktails. The vibe of the place is awesome, with modern art and good music. If I was a single guy in San Francisco, this would be a great first date place. What girl doesn’t love a decadent dessert and a class cocktail?
I ordered the “Ice Cream Sunday” which had macarons, caramelized bananas, brownie, vanilla anglaise, strawberries, and strawberry ice cream. It was everything I could have hoped for and more.
After that it was off to the airport to catch a flight back to Madison. I was sad to say goodbye to my wonderful roomie but oh so happy to get home to Pat.
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