This week’s dinner was on a Saturday, which is fairly rare for us (we always try to avoid the weekend reservations) and even more rare because it was for the second seating which started at 8:15PM, which is late for us old folks.

It was also in San Mateo (Bryan did you ever eat here when you still lived here?) and we don’t typically venture out of SF because we always have so many options and new restaurants to try in SF.

But I had been meaning to eat here for so long and we often hear about this restaurant at other omakase restaurants, but with only 8 or 9 seats, it’s often difficult to get a reservation without some advanced planning. The reason for making this reservation on a Saturday, second seating was because they had their special sake tasting as the pairing that we wanted to try.

The restaurant is a traditional Edomae style omakase. When making the reservation, the message on Tock loudly states

“PLEASE READ THESE BEFORE MAKING A RESERVATION:

IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANY EXPERIENCES OF HIGH-END Edomae sushi restaurants in Japan, you may NOT UNDERSTAND our restaurant concept and you WILL NOT LIKE OUR RESTAURANT AT ALL. PLEASE DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME AND MONEY if you expect very fancy dining experience here.

We are very simple, very authentic TRUE edomae sushi , not kaiseki style sushi. And every fish comes from Japan and all fishes are wild not from farm at all so yes, it does cost a lot.

No torch, no truffles, no caviar ,no golden flakes, no music , no fusion , no sommlier, no fancy wines at all.

But we do have VERY RARE sake selections directly from Japan.”

It was nice to not have any music playing for a change (contrast this to a contemporary omakase like Robin where I remember walking in with Wu Tang Clan playing (which I love). It’s also always amusing for us when Andrea is the only non-Asian in the restaurant.

The chef relies on using the best ingredients he can source (all the fish is from Japan) prepared and seasoned well (i did see them using a kitchen torch a little bit on some of the grilled items in the back kitchen despite their saying they don’t do that, lol). The first several bites incredible. The bonito with the horseradish was probably the best bonito presentation we’ve ever had and was possibly my favorite. Andrea really loved the sea bass which she though was the best. The octopus was so incredibly tender. Every bite was so flavorful and representative of the ingredients and seasoned perfectly. I was just about ready to say this was the best sushi restaurant we had ever been to.

In general, all of the nigiri was quite enjoyable with several highlights.. The prawns were so deliciously sweet, the ankimo (monkfish liver) was also the best presentation of that we’ve ever had. Although as the meal progressed, there were some bites that were good, but not anything special. Even the Hokkaido uni roll was good, but we’ve had a lot of Hokkaido uni and this was actually served too cold. The large fatty tuna roll at the end was a bit of an anticlimactic disappointment (was expecting much more flavor and unctuousness).

The sakes were all very good. A couple had a bit of effervescence. I think my two favorites were some of the moddle ones that had cherry on the nose and the palate. I did check to see if I could source the sakes from True Sake, but they didn’t even have the brewers listed at all on their site, so they were true to their word in that these couldn’t be found in the bay area.