San Francisco: Sanraku

We got up, had breakfast, and took the Caltrain into San Francisco today.  

We stopped in Metreon (a center with several restaurants, a couple stores, an AMC 15 movie theater, and an arcade) for lunch. Jonathan saw that Sanraku had wonderful reviews (and I saw it mentioned in Frommer's as well), so we stopped there. We were seated quickly (not very busy for noon on a Saturday), and were served nice, cool water while we read the menu. Jonathan chose the Sushi Special, and I went with the Sashimi and Chicken Teriyaki Combo. We had piping hot miso soup brought out, and it was pretty good. We hardly had time to finish the coup when our entrees had arrived. My sashimi (raw fish without the rice) was 5 pieces of chef's choice, and I was glad to see three big pieces of tuna and two slabs of salmon. The tuna was very good, among the best I've had. The salmon was a bit much on its own (I should mention I struggled to pick up a piece with my chopsticks, it was so large!), but still good. The wasabi was good, but the ginger was a little off. My chicken teriyaki was in a delectable sauce, and the rice it came with was good and sticky. The salad was a bit much, mostly since it had a strange dressing (not ginger, not soy, something I had never before encountered with Japanese cuisine). Jonathan's special came with 6 pieces of nigiri and 6 pieces of California Roll. However, a California roll out here is not what it is in Florida. Here it has crab, avocado, and cucumber, rice on the outside, and sprinkled with roe. His nigiri ranged from tuna to salmon to tamago (like a sweet egg omelet with a custardy taste) to shrimp to whitefish to a roll of just roe and rice. The tamago was different, but overall he enjoyed the selection.