Sushi chef gets a spot in a four-star spotlight

locations, but nothing worked out.

That’s when serendipity came into play.

A few weeks ago, one of Saison’s sous chefs injured his knee seriously enough to take him out of commission for quite awhile. Skenes filled the void himself, but in that meant he had to stop serving the chef’s counter dinners — special tasting menus offered twice a week at the counter, where he would cook everything himself for eight people a night.

So Skenes offered Lin the chef’s counter, where he’ll be cooking through the end of May. (An extension is possible, although Skenes and Lin are still looking for a stand-alone space.)

Now, Lin prepares an omakase menu, fueled by an ’80s pop rock soundtrack and dark-suited Saison servers. The meal begins with simple cooked dishes — a fried shiso leaf, a dashi, a grilled aji — before the reaching the main event: A quick-fire procession of nigiri, straight from Lin’s hands, each slightly different. He shares the provenance and preparation of each one: Seabream, live scallop, needlefish, mackerel, cherry trout.

The ornate, impossibly thin-stemmed wine glasses and singular plate ware that frame the meal are out of Saison’s cache, but the simplest part leaves the most lasting impression.

“To me, the best thing about it is the rice,” says Skenes, whose culinary talent has earned him countless accolades, but now deserves a fresh round for installing a dinner option for himself in his own restaurant.

“It’s really hard to find great, great high-level — I mean, Japan-level — rice. In fact, I haven’t ever had any in San Francisco. It doesn’t exist, besides this.”

Lin will tell you how he makes the rice, and he will let you watch him make the rice. But it’s not about that; it’s about feeling it.

“To get the perfect rice, you have to make the mistakes a couple times,” says Lin. “Too much water, too dry. You have to find the right way. Nothing comes easy. You have to put effort into it.”

For Lin, it’s been a quarter-century of practice and consistency, culminating in a single bite, quickly handed to the diner before it disappears in an instant.

“The rice is very warm. It all comes together in this little pillowy mass but you can taste the texture of each little grain of rice,” Skenes says.

“And when you put it together with the cold fish,” he adds, slapping his palms together, replicating the sushi press that Lin has perfected. “It’s just magic.”

“My first priority is quality and doing the right thing. There are some things you cannot do without sense and skill.”

Jiro Lin, chef