Soulful anchor in Dogpatch
Hyperbole runs scattershot through many restaurant websites when describing their food and service.
So it seemed like an exaggeration when I read that the owner of Moshi Moshi, Mitsura “Mits” Akashi, “offers his heart to the patrons.”
But it’s true. Our hearts melted when the smiling 83year-old owner, leaning on a cane for support, hobbled from table to table to greet everyone. He then stood by the door, smiling and greeting customers like it was his first night in business rather than his 30th year.
Much has changed in those years. When the restaurant opened in 1987, at the juncture of Mission Bay and Dogpatch, it was an entirely different landscape, and Japanese food hadn’t yet captured the imagination of the dining public. Akashi affectionately dubbed the area the “Industrial Riviera” because of the concentration of docks, warehouses, fishermen and empty parking lots.
Akashi says that when he saw the expanse of empty land around the building, then called the Barnacle, he reasoned San Francisco would someday grow east.
It did. What he didn’t anticipate is that that growth meant decades of disruptions with the construction of the Third Street light-rail line right outside his front door. A decade after the line opened, the disruptions continued, with condominiums and apartments rising on all sides of the modest gray two-story stucco restaurant. Even today the area around the restaurant looks like a construction zone.
I remember going to Moshi Moshi soon after it opened and marveling at how remote this warehouse area seemed at night. Now parking can be a challenge, and the patrons are a cross section of the emerging neighborhood and workers from the new UCSF Medical Center a block away.
Moshi Moshi bridges the two eras of Dogpatch in an understated way. The cracked linoleum on the floor seems original, but the sleek, curved drop ceiling at the bar was added during a remodel about 14 years ago. At about the same time, Akashi also started a three-year project to turn the side patio into another bar and dining room that’s now painted a dark color, giving it a kind of Gothic feel. He also installed a side garden, which is often used for private parties. All told the restaurant now seats about 60.
By today’s standards, the menu, with its three-fold configuration, is impossibly long — and that doesn’t include a separate sheet of specials. I was hoping the waiters would follow the pattern of trendier places with menus about onefifth the size and ask, “Do you know how the menu works?”
Of course, they didn’t. One page highlights appetizers; another has familiar Japanese specialties that include teriyaki salmon, salted wild mackerel, tempura and sushi rolls. Diners can select items individually or combine three items for $24.95. The price includes rice and miso soup.
There’s also a separate section for noodle soups and sauteed noodles, an additional expanded selection of sushi and maki rolls, and an entire category of vegetable sushi.
It’s almost too much to take in.
My strategy was to choose something from as many categories as I could. So on my visit I had teriyaki, tempura, udon noodles, dumplings, sushi and maki rolls — covering the entire Japanese spectrum.
I was pleasantly surprised that everything was as good as it was given the breadth of the menu. I was particularly impressed with the tempura mushrooms ($5.95) in a puffy crisp batter, and the chewy udon noodles ($13.95) in the house-made broth. The soup comes with a side of chicken karaage.
The sushi was fine, even if the hamachi, salmon, tuna and unagi were sliced a little thick and the vinegared rice underneath was a little sticky for my taste. Still the products were fresh, and I’ve had worse at other sushi restaurants that charge more.
The menu offers a combination for $33.95 that includes eight pieces of nigiri and two rolls. There’s also a combination of other fish, such as hamachi, served six pieces to an order for $18.95.
Thanks to Akashi, who was a draftsman but wanted to learn bartending and ended up working at several Japanese restaurants, Moshi Moshi also has a large cocktail selection that includes a barrelaged manhattan ($13) that’s about as potent and generously poured as you’ll find. One is about the equivalent of two at other places. As with the long menu, if you want a cocktail, you can get just about anything, including a collection of low-alcohol highballs such as one with Lillet and soda ($8).
The service is a reflection of Akashi’s upbeat attitude. Service may not be the most efficient — you can wait 10 minutes for a cocktail, for example — but it’s so well-meaning that you easily adapt and go with the flow. On my visit the place was full, and clearly the restaurant has tapped into the ever-expanding neighborhood.
Even though it was difficult for the restaurant to survive with the ongoing construction, Akashi remained an optimist. His response to hardship — the restaurant almost closed in the early 2000s when business was slow, and he has experienced health problems — is to chuckle and say, “I’m just passionate. When you have a business, you just keep on pumping.”
He credits much of his perseverance to the support of his staff and customers. Even well into his eighth decade, he comes in for lunch and dinner service most days. He takes every Wednesday off, and because of his advancing age, every other Saturday. “It’s life. My life. I love it.” Today Moshi Moshi has become a spiritual anchor to the area, a place that holds tradition and is welcoming a new generation that can’t remember a time when they couldn’t jump on or off the Muni train or unlock the door to their $700,000 starter condominiums.