Japanese traditions find fertile ground
Eighteenth, between Guerrero and Dolores, is a top-notch food block. Tartine is the only resident of international renown, but the median quality of the street’s offerings — Delfina and its pizzeria, Bi-Rite and its creamery — is high. The only low point has traditionally been the high-ceilinged, square room on the northwest corner of Guerrero and 18th. During the seven or so years that I worked in the Mission, it was occupied first by a PanLatin place named Platanos, then a forgettable diner called Craig’s Place. When that closed, the owners reanimated the space as a raw bar called Ebb & Flow, which, in practice, only ebbed.
Centuries before that, this part of town was literally a land of ebb and flow. The expansive tidal marshes running inland from Mission Bay ended right around here. Arroyo Dolores, a stream emanating from a natural spring to the west, once ran almost straight down present-day 18th Street, flanked by cattle-friendly grassland. It’s a naturally productive area — one of the few in San Francisco’s mostly sandy, shrubby landscape — and it encouraged
the Spanish to construct Mission Dolores.
Yuko Hayashi took over the corner of 18th and Guerrero in 2011 with something of a mission of her own. First under the guidance of chef Takashi Saito and currently Yoshio Sasaki, Yuzu ki is geared toward demonstrating classical Japanese techniques. A poster in the bathroom reads: “Izakaya Yuzuki is the first Japanese restaurant in the U.S. to introduce a unique menu featuring dishes prepared using ‘koji.’ ” I doubt that that’s entirely true, but then again, I’ve never put much stock in things you read on bathroom walls.
The speciousness of the claim doesn’t detract from the splendor of the squid ya ki tori: fins, body and tentacles marinated in koji, grilled, sliced and served with a squeeze of lemon, togarashi and a mayonnaise-y dipping sauce. Each section of the squid lies on a different but equally pleasant part of the crunchy creamy-chewy spectrum and sings with clean, savory, sweet flavors and a light perfume of charcoal.
I wasn’t familiar with shio koji when Yuzuki first arrived to “introduce its unique menu.” But now, I have a batch fermenting in my refrigerator, waiting to be deployed as a marinade. The salt (shio) in this wondershmoo will season and draw liquid from whatever its target meat is, while the friendly mold Aspergillus oryzae(koji) will break down starches into sugars and proteins into tasty amino acids. Shio koji tenderizes while it imparts both sweetness and umami.
Likewise, when I first ate at Yuzuki five years ago, I hadn’t yet been awakened to donabe — the multipurpose glazed ceramic cooking vessel from Japan that does wonders for all kinds of dishes, but especially rice. One of the big cookbooks last year was the singlesubject “Donabe,” written by Kyle Connaughton and Naoko Takei Moore. Connaughton and his wife, Katina, recently opened the ultra-luxe Single Thread in Healdsburg, where donabe from Mie Prefecture line the shelves of the kitchen and play a part in every meal. As one of the courses in an extended tasting menu, a hot donabe is brought to your table by a server who lifts the lid to reveal a beautifully composed arrangement of fish, flowers, vegetables and herbs over a bed of roasted Japanese onions. The waiter then whisks the pot back to the kitchen and returns with the contents precisely portioned onto plates.
At Yuzuki, when you order a donabe of salmon rice, the pot stays on the table. The rice is as perfect as it should be — firm but not al dente, not overly sticky and gloriously aromatic. The fish is mild and succulent, and translucent orange pearls of salmon roe are scattered throughout the rice, creating little pockets of sea-salty umami that season each bite. At least once every other week, I’ll cook a similar dish at home, a ritual that’s been improved immensely with the help of the “Donabe” book. But truth be told, I prefer Yuzuki’s donabe course to Single Thread’s.
Beyond the keynote menu items, there’s still a lot more goodness to be had at Yuzuki. The homemade tofu is fantastically delicate, with the jiggle of panna cotta and the faint but unmistakable taste of fresh soybeans. A little bowl of braised beef tendon looks gruesome but tastes glorious, gingery and rich, with a texture like warm gum my bears. Slices of braised duck breast have the familiar sweet-soy profile of many Japanese stews and sauces, but a surprising and welcome meaty chew. And a plate of yaki omusubi — four crisp grilled triangles of buttered rice topped with watercress and uni — is a perfect accompaniment to cold Japanese lager.
Yuzuki’s been humming along quietly for almost six years. It’s received a little bit of good press, but puzzlingly, it rarely comes up in conversations about the city’s outstanding restaurants.
Restaurateurs like to talk about cursed spaces, places where no chef or concept can ever seem to get a foothold. I’m guilty of buying into this superstition myself. But the notion of cursed spaces runs somewhat contrary to the time worn saying about location that realtors and restaurateurs love to recite like a Hindu mantra. There is, I think, much more truth in location.
As far removed as we may seem from the time when 18th Street was an idyllic spring-fed gully, I like to believe that the block is great for restaurants because it’s an inherently fertile piece of land. Like all organic bodies, cities depend on the land and succeed when the right seeds are planted in the right places. (I’ve been comfortingmyself with this thought as I’ve watched my billionaire neighbor buy and convert a second residential property into a private basketball court. I’m hopeful that the earth will reject this invasive species.)
It turns out that there are no cursed restaurants. It comes down to the right idea taking root, and, when something great begins to grow, people nurturing it.