Princeton Eats SF: a food Saturday - Dinner

SUSHI!!!

I love sushi.  I love sushi even more when I eat it with my "vegetarian" best friend.  The only two good things that resulted from Ben and Santina moving to Mexico (this is a selfish statement; of course there are many good things that resulted for them) were getting to visit them and Santina eating fish.  It gives me such pleasure that she has continued to eat fish upon returning to the states.

So, it was sushi at Sushi Bistro for our Saturday night dinner, and what a feast we had.  We started with three small plates: tuna poke, butterfish blasters (snow crab meat and avocado wrapped in butterfish), and Y.T. jalapeno (slices of yellowtail topped with sliced jalapenos, sea salt and lemon juice).  

All were delicious, and it is very difficult to pick a winner, but I think I would have to go with the poke.  With the frequency that I visit Kauai, I have eaten a lot of poke in my day.  This poke was very lightly marinated and did not have any seaweed, both a nice change from the traditional Hawaiian poke. 

Next up was a plate of butterfish, tuna, albacore tataki, yellowtail, salmon and albacore sashimi (picture at the top of the page).  I had not eaten butterfish before that night.  The butterfish in the appetizer was seared, and with the combination of the crab and avocado, it was difficult to get a sense of how the fish actually tasted.  When the plate of sashimi arrived, Ben and Santina were a little put off by the solid white color of the fish.  To quell their doubts, I went first.  I must say, butterfish is a delicious fish.  It is, well, buttery.  It is a bit like salmon in it's creaminess, and there is not an overpowering fishy taste.  

We never figured out which albacore was which, but there is no question that one of the two was the best fish on the plate.  It is rare that a fish will beat out salmon for my favorite, but the albacore was melt in your mouth soft and perfectly flavored.  My mouth is watering thinking about it.

Despite the ban on special rolls that Ben and I had discussed implementing, we ended up ordering two, the aloha 101 (ahi tuna, mango and cucumber wrapped in seaweed, flash-fried, served with spicy garlic sauce) and the monster in-laws (chopped spicy albacore, cucumber topped with yellowtail, jalapenos, spicy and ponzu sauce).  They were good, but I prefer simple sushi, either sashimi, nigiri, or simple rolls.  

We finished off our meal with another plate of sashimi of which I unfortunately did not take a picture.  Included on the plate were two specials, baby blue fin tuna and wild (some type I can't remember) salmon.  I am never very impressed by tuna sushi.  I like it, that's for sure, but it never gives me a mouth orgasm like other fish does.  This baby blue fin tuna?  I'd say it is in a tie with the albacore for best of the night and maybe even beats out the albacore.

That's it for my San Francisco food Saturday.  I hope to have many more SF food days to report about in the future.  And when I do report in the future, I will take pictures with a real camera, not the camera on my phone, and the quality won't suck as badly as it does in this post.

Bon appetit.