Japantown, San Francisco

Japantown (??? Nihonmachi) in San Francisco is also known as Little Osaka, Funayville and J Town. It is the largest and oldest Japanese town in the United States and spans over six blocks on Post Street, between Laguna Street and Webster Street. The focal point of Japantown is the Japan Center, which opened in 1968 and is three Japanese-oriented shopping centres.

Peace Pagoda, Japantown

The other main focal point of Japantown is the Peace Pagoda (shown above), a five-tiered concrete stupa which was designed by a Japanese architect Yoshiro Taniguchi and was presented to San Francisco by the people of Osaka in Japan. It is located between Post and Geary St at Buchanan and is part of the Japan Center complex. Look how small I am compared to this Peace Pagoda! It’s absolutely massive.

Japantown is full of Japanese restaurants, supermarkets, indoor shopping malls, hotels, banks and other shops, including Kinokuniya.

I took my brother here for his birthday to treat him to lunch!

This was the first time I’ve ever had such good Japanese food before. It was so authentic and it was so much food! Mmmm.

Miyako

(Japantown, San Francisco, California)

1707 Buchanan St, San Francisco, California

Restaurant Review: Guu Sakabar

Last Saturday I got to finally check out the new Guu SakaBar that opened on Bloor and Bathurst. I love love love Japanese Food and I find fusion food Japanese food such as Sushi Samba really interesting. I’ve heard a lot of people raving about Guu so far but I had yet to experience it. What I found that I love most about Guu is that you really feel like you’ve stepped right into Japan! Just as you step inside, the entire staff (waters and chefs) all scream out (something in Japanese) to welcome you. It really was welcoming indeed! It was very cute.

Beware of Guu’s famous reputation as there is always a line. We were smart and made sure we were there before 6pm on a Saturday evening before the majority of people would generally go out to eat. Yet, we were still made to line up for about 15 minutes and when we finally left at 9pm, the line was quite long. So make sure you go early or you’ll be sorry for waiting!

We ended up getting quite an awesome table in the second dining room where we were instructed to remove our shoes and park them in their shoe shelf. I wasn’t fussed by this especially since I was keen to take off my high heels, however as we were  guided to our table I started to get worried. I looked at how low the tables were situated and saw that there were butt pads on the floor for you to sit on. I was thinking to myself, “Oh my! We have to sit on the floor?!?!”

While that would have been truly the authentic Japanese experience, as I approached our table I was relieved to discover there was a gap in the flooring so that we could allow our legs to sit like we would sit on a chair. Yes, we were sitting on the floor but not really because we did not have to kneel or sit cross legged. This was really cool but it was so hard to get out of there!

Guu is a tapas-style restaurant whereby their dishes are primarily small appetizers in which you can share. Above is the Specials Menu in which we ordered the last 3 items on this page!

Salmon Natto Yukke: Chopped salmon sashimi with five friends (Natto, shibazuke, takuan, wonton chips, green onion and quail egg). What you do is mix them up and then wrap it in seaweed!

Okonomiyaki: Japanese deep fried pancake with yakisoba noodles, tonkatsu sauce and mayo.

Filet of Fish: Filet of black cod like burger with pink tar tar tankatsu sauce in rice cakes.

Agedashi: Deep fried tofu in dashi broth topped with water eel and noti seaweed.

Almond Tofu

Roasted Green Tea Cheesecake

I thought this was a really awesome place to dine and easily understood the popularity and rave of this place. When you don’t have the time or money to fly all the way to Japan, you can definitely go to Guu for the Japanese dining atmosphere. While the food is not authentic Japanese (as I mentioned earlier, it was more fusion style), the types of food on offer are truly unique and very special. It brings back the fun and entertainment back into food and dining. In all, I had a great time and that’s what food should be all about.

Btw, thanks so much Jason for taking me!

Guu SakaBar

(Annex, Toronto, Canada)

559 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON
www.guu-izakaya.com

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History of Benihana

Benihana is a well-known Japanese cuisine franchise with nearly 80 restaurants around the world. It was founded in 1964 on West 56th Street in New York City by 25-year old Hiroaki “Rocky” Aoki. He was a qualified wrestler at the time, but did not attend the 1960 Summer Olympics and started the restaurant with just $10,000 that he earned from driving an ice cream truck in Harlem.

The first restaurant (named Benihana of Tokyo), was named after the red Safflower which was the name of his parent’s coffee shop in Tokyo. Rocky’s idea was for customers to enjoy meals around a teppanyaki table combined with some knife theatrics (which I really enjoyed!)

 Restaurant Review & Photos

We first started off my meal with a warm and satisfying miso soup.

And then began the knife theatrics! Our chef started throwing eggs in the air and catching them with his knife so that it would split exactly in half. Very skillful!

And then he fried us some Japanese style fried rice in the shape of a heart. Aww :)

Freshly served Fried Rice! Yum!

Then comes freshly cooked shrimp! Mmmm..

Our chef then proceeded to cut up some onions, stacked them, then poured some oil down the middle and it then turned into an onion volcano! Hahaha..

Here’s our teppanyaki style dinner. The meat was probably a lot more chewier than I liked (especially when I asked for medium-rare) however the whole experience was really enjoyable and the food was quite decent. I would recommend coming here more for the experience, and it was a lot of fun. Expect quite the show while you eat. Also expect to be very full though – I normally eat A LOT and I normally eat VERY FAST however I was the slowest one to eat on the table because there was just so much yummy food!

It is located at the Royal York Hotel at Front and York St, Toronto.

Benihana

(Entertainment District, Toronto, Canada)

100 Front St W, Toronto, Ontario
http://www.benihana.com/

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About Sushi Samba

While I was in Chicago, we decided to try the famous Sushi Samba which offers a unique blend of Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian cuisine, music and design. Through the energy and spirit that birthed in the early 20th century when thousands of Japanese travelled to South America to cultivate coffee plantations and make their fortune. It is because of this, places such as Lima in Peru and São Paulo in Brazil, these three distinct cultures have integrated and became a beautiful combination. And it is because of this, the experience you have at SushiSamba is a truly unique one. It is no wonder that SushiSamba has been so popular, expanding to five locations in the world’s most trendiest locations: NYC, Miami, Chicago and Las Vegas.

As you walk into SushiSamba you are greeted with amazing design and atmosphere. Especially by the way everybody dresses up to go to this place, you’ll wonder if you’ve walked into a lounge/bar or a restaurant.

Main Room

Sushi Bar

Sexy Red Hot Interior Design

I’m not exactly sure what we ordered because we left this up to the waiter to decide what to eat. Haha! There were way too many delicious choices on the menu and you can request the waiter make a four course set for you to your liking. He asked us a few questions on what we enjoyed, what we didn’t and he brought us quite an exquisite choice of items. I very much enjoyed this experience, and I had full trust in my waiter (maybe because he was amazingly hot and I was entranced by everything he said…) hahaha. Or maybe it was because I was happily enjoying my fruity alcoholic beverage which was AMAZING, by the way! Make sure you order the SambaJuice cocktail which was a combination of raspberry and watermelon infused rum, açai, passion fruit, créme de banana and guava - it’s was fckn out of this world. No jokes.

First Course: Chicharron Calamari with mint, tamarind, plantain

I don’t normally like calamari and I’ve had some pretty badly cooked calamari in the past.. but one piece of this and I was sold! I could not stop putting these into my mouth they were so good! Cooked to perfection, soft and chewy enough without being at all rubbery.

The sushi here was so fresh and tasty with such a unique blend of Japanese flavours with Brazilian spices and textures.

Squid, asparagus with sesame seed and scallops (?)

The four course menu was to die for and was about $55 a person. I’ve been raving about this place for months but when I’ve been asked to explain why it was so good – it was really hard to say. It’s something that you really need to try for yourself. Please trust me on this – you WILL be blown away.

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Sushi Samba Rio
504 North Wells Street
Chicago, IL 60654, United States
(312) 595-2300
sushisamba.com?

I had one of those moments where I was absolutely starving and I had no idea what to eat! I opened up the freezer and saw that I’ve had a packet of udon which has been sitting there for a long time now because I had no idea what to do with it. I knew I had to use this up soon (especially since it’s taking up precious freezer space) so I googled some udon recipes and tried to throw something together with the ingredients I had!

I started off by boiling the udon in a saucepan. Cook this until it expands a little and is nice and firm, yet smooth and a bit soft.

While that’s cooking up, I fried some onions, spring onions (green onions), shitake mushroom and beensprout in a frying pan.

Add some soy sauce and seaweed and mixed this up. Cook this for about 2-5 minutes.

Once the  udon is done, add this to the pan and mix. I also added some black pepper (because I love pepper so much)

Then serve! :)

This was actually surprisingly more tasty that I expected! Must be the flavour from the shitake mushrooms and the seaweed! When I ate this, I added some Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese spice) and it was amazing. Yum yum.