Hello, EVA Air flights 15 and 397 from Los Angeles to Taoyuan to Hanoi

by   •   Flights, Highlights
 

I mentioned this a few times in previous blog posts, but the reason I was still around Los Angeles County, even though I hate it and avoid it as much as I can, is because I had an international flight scheduled out of Los Angeles International Airport. My home airport of Harry Reid International Airport in the Las Vegas Valley has great coverage for many destinations, but for the particular route I was flying, LAX worked a bit better.

So where exactly am I going? Hà Nội, Việt Nam.

Yes, that does indeed sound like a pretty random place, especially for someone like me who generally stays within the United States and doesn’t travel internationally much, but there is a reason for going to Hà Nội in particular—my company Tempo’s video game The Bazaar is having its very first community-run in-person esports event at PK Gaming’s facility in the Ngoại Giao Đoàn neighborhood.

However, I’m not going for work, per se. Even though it’s my company’s game, I’m basically attending the event as a tourist (and then also being a tourist in other areas of Hà Nội while I’m there). I work on the corporate side of Tempo and pretty much never directly touch the development of The Bazaar itself, and have gone as far as to have never even played a single round of The Bazaar before, so I am quite literally just going into this as simply a spectator.

With that being said, coordinating this trip to overlap with an event for The Bazaar made the trip feel more meaningful, as opposed to arbitrarily picking a completely random city and country in Asia to visit for no underlying reason. Thus, late last night, I made my way over to LAX for my very long travel day.

(As you will immediately notice, yes, I did indeed fly business class for these flights. However, to be clear, I paid out-of-pocket for my business class ticket. Before anyone asks, no, I am not going on luxury trips and expensing it to Tempo. The company’s revenue is being reinvested back into further development of The Bazaar and is not being used to sponsor my premium travel itineraries.)

My night started at the Tom Bradley International Terminal with a smooth and uneventful check-in process due to having no checked baggage and being an enrollee of TSA PreCheck. After making my way airside, I navigated my way to the Star Alliance Lounge, the designated lounge for EVA Air due to EVA not having a dedicated lounge at LAX.

This lounge had an outdoor area with fire pits and a nice view of the tarmac. As far as I can recall, I think this is the one and only lounge I’ve ever been in that had an outdoor portion where you could get some fresh outside air.

The lounge also had a balcony area that overlooked the rest of the TBIT. This basically captures my favorite part about this lounge—it had so many different kinds of environments (even including a dim theater room) that pretty much anyone could have a comfortable time at the lounge, no matter what their preferences are.

I opted to relax in the balcony area while eating some food and people-watching.

The convenient thing about being in a Star Alliance lounge while flying on a Star Alliance airline was that they did announcements for Star Alliance flights, including one for mine. Once boarding time was imminent, they notified the lounge-goers that it was now time to start heading to the boarding gate.

After getting my travel visa verified and embarking the Boeing 777-300ER, I walked over to my seat, 11K. I picked this seat because it’s the last seat in the corner of the business class cabin, and there is usually a curtain that separates the business class and premium economy cabins, so seats 11A and 11K end up being the most private seats on the aircraft.

To make things even more private for me on this flight, I got lucky enough that all three seats adjacent to mine were empty.

While the flight attendants were preparing passenger meals, we were given a hot towel, beverage, and snack to keep us occupied while we wait. For my drink, I asked for a Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.

My flight attendant, whose name is Josie, came back with a can from the “Share a Coke with” series that had “Josie 麻吉麻” printed on the front. I’m not sure if this was a remarkable coincidence or not, but if it was intentionally arranged so that your Coca-Cola can has the name of your flight attendant on it, that’s some pretty impressive attention to detail.

For my appetizer, I received a lobster salad. The lobster was fresh, there was a satisfying ratio of seafood to vegetables, and everything was covered in a delicious sauce that had a perfect balance of spiciness and sweetness.

My main entrée was Chilean sea bass covered in a butter sauce and with a side of truffle gnocchi, asparagus, and tomatoes. The fish was extremely tender and flaky, and was comparable to something I’d find at a high-end seafood restaurant.

As a refresher, I got a small fruit plate containing cantaloupe, orange, and grapes.

Dessert was a lemon tart atop a berry sauce. This was the least remarkable part of the meal, as it just tasted like a generic pastry, but I still enjoyed it.

Shortly after meal service was over, they cleared everyone’s tables and dimmed the lights so we could go to sleep. The ceiling was illuminated with small lights resembling a starry night sky, which was a nice touch.

The lie-flat seat wasn’t the most comfortable I’ve ever felt, but they offered a mattress pad which was very helpful, and was still more than enough for a good night’s rest. I actually managed to get a nearly full eight hours of sleep, which I wasn’t expecting.

With just a couple hours left in the flight, the flight attendants started breakfast service. Josie brought me a cup of coffee with brown sugar to try and help me wake up (even though caffeine doesn’t affect me) (but I did not tell her that and just enjoyed the caffè latte).

For breakfast, I had Chinese plain congee with a side of cold delicatessens, black beans, pan-fried egg with shrimp, and braised pork ribs.

This was probably my all-time favorite airline meal. It wasn’t as delicious as the Chilean sea bass from earlier, but for some reason, this congee tasted very nostalgic, which is really funny, because I never had Chinese-style congee as a kid (my parents are Korean, not Chinese). This was an incredibly cozy-feeling meal, and it made me feel warm inside, not just from the warmth of the congee, but also from the sense of comfort that this flavor profile mysteriously brought to me.

For dessert, I received another fruit plate, this time with a bit more artistic presentation.

We soon flew over Taipei and approached the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.

After deplaning, I made my way over to the Oriental Club Lounge to wait out my layover until the second leg of my trip.

I wanted to be very cautious and not accidentally leave airside so I wouldn’t have to go through security again, and in my diligence, I happened to inadvertently avoid the area I needed to traverse through to get to the lounge. It was fine though; I walked two big circles around the airport for no reason, but at least I got my exercise in after the nearly 13-hour flight from Los Angeles.

The Oriental Club Lounge is apparently an award-winning lounge. It wasn’t the most impressive lounge I’ve ever seen, but it was definitely much better than average. I was very full by this point (and knew I had another in-flight meal coming up), so I opted not to get any food; instead, I just sipped on some Coca-Cola Zero throughout my stay in order to maintain my hydration.

With about 40 minutes to go until departure, I made my way to gate B7 to board my connecting flight. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a boarding delay, so I had to stand there for about half an hour in the unusually high heat and humidity.

Eventually, we made it on the plane, which was another Boeing 777-300ER. We had a different painting hung up at the front of the business class cabin on this aircraft, which made me curious how many people there are out there who travel on EVA Air so frequently that they keep track of which paintings they’ve seen and collect photographs of them as if they’re trading cards.

Here’s a view of TPE out my window. My plane didn’t have any special livery, but the plane parked at the neighboring gate had some Sanrio characters on it.

Not long after take-off, meal service began. As our appetizer, we received a shrimp cocktail.

For my main entrée, I picked Chef Huang Ching-Biao’s steamed pork ribs with chestnuts and vegetables atop fried Cantonese noodles. On the side, I had a piece of garlic bread. The pork ribs were unbelievably tender and took “melt in your mouth” and “fall right off the bone” to a whole new level.

This was just as delicious as the Chilean sea bass, and the three meals that I had on EVA Air landed squarely as the top three best in-flight meals I’ve ever had.

For dessert, I got another lemon tart, but this one was slightly different. Again, this tasted pretty close to a generic well-made pastry.

For my beverage, I ordered a non-alcoholic drink from their “mocktail” menu—a pineapple, cranberry, and ginger ale cocktail.

After finishing all my food, I reclined back, put in my earbuds, listened to music, and relaxed for the remainder of the flight.

After a little over three hours on board, we touched down at Nội Bài International Airport. Upon landing and deplaning, I stood in line to get through immigrations, which was smooth and uneventful. When passing through customs, I stood in the “goods to declare” line so that I could disclose the vitamins and supplements I had brought with me, but after sending my backpack and luggage through an x-ray machine, the customs officer waved me through without further questioning.

I am now at my hotel and concluded the longest travel day I’ve ever had in my life. If you include the time I spent ridesharing to LAX, waiting in the lounge, flying to TPE, waiting in the lounge some more, flying to HAN, standing in line, and ridesharing to my hotel, my overall total travel time clocked in at right around 26 hours.

That sounds like an excruciatingly long time, and I probably normally would have been completely exhausted, but upgrading myself to business class was absolutely worth it and made the day much easier. Thanks to the nice lounges and immaculate in-flight service on EVA Air, everything was made far more comfortable, and I feel well enough that I don’t think I will even need a rest and recovery day before getting started with my Hà Nội adventures.

 

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Hello Open Sauce 2025

by   •   Conventions, Face, Highlights
 

FTC Disclosure: Open Sauce, Inc. did not explicitly ask me to write this blog post, did not pay me for this review, and did not have an opportunity to review or request changes to this piece prior to its publication. However, I did receive material incentive to attend Open Sauce 2025 by way of free admission, the comparable public retail value of which amounts to a VIP ticket worth US$1,499.00. All other expenses were self-funded.

 
After I had a great time last year at Open Sauce 2024, my friend Billie-Rae, an executive of and the head of marketing at the company running Open Sauce, invited me to attend again this year. Open Sauce 2024 was my all-time favorite convention, so I was happy to accept the invitation and head back to the San Francisco Bay Area last weekend, this year to the San Mateo County Event Center.

As a reminder, the reason why I liked Open Sauce so much last year is because it felt more like a large science fair than it did a regular convention. I’ve been to many conventions, both as part of my work at Tempo and for personal leisure, but many of them feel very commercialized. Open Sauce stood out in that it was a collection of people who were genuinely interested in science and wanted to show off and talk about their experiments and creations. Other conventions’ exhibition halls feel like a gigantic collection of advertisements, but Open Sauce’s exhibition halls are filled with passionate scientists and technology enthusiasts.

The advertisers and sponsors that do still go to Open Sauce are integrated very well and showcase their product in a way where it doesn’t feel like they’re trying to get you to buy their product, but rather, they’re demonstrating what their product can do and are leaving it up to you to decide. Sponsors whose primary objective is brand exposure are still integrated naturally; for example, PCBWay was back again this year with another batch of branded metallic circuit board credential badges that people could bring to their booth and personally solder components onto to make it light up.

When I received my itinerary this year, I noticed that there were fewer special experiences for creators and guests compared to last year. These special activities and parties were some of my favorite things from last year, so it wasn’t great news when I found out that there was less going on in 2025. On top of that, the one off-site activity they had was just a repeat of last year—a tour of Adam Savage’s workshop, “The Cave.” With that being said, I think we were just extra spoiled last year; there were still plenty of opportunities for people to congregate and network with each other this year, which I think is the priority for most of the creators and special guests when they attend events like this.

In a similar vein, there were a lot more content creators, members of the press, and special guests this year. Last year, there was a fairly limited scope of people in attendance, with a vast majority of the creators and guests being science and technology YouTubers. I liked this because these YouTubers felt, for a lack of a better word, normal. They were all pleasant and approachable people, and none of them had any of the undesirable characteristics that you usually find in Twitch live streaming or influencer culture of being self-centered, arrogant, and out of touch with reality. This year, I think there were more people who extended outside the “normal scientist” bubble and gave off a mild form of the “sheltered influencer” energy. With that being said, I think there was still a solid filter with regards to who was invited, and the spotlighted creators were nowhere near as bad as what you’d find in live streaming or video gaming conventions.

(Random side note: While I was in the creator lounge, I managed to meet Alan Melikdjanian, owner of the Captain Disillusion YouTube channel. I have watched his videos for a long time and not only admire his video editing skills but also his philosophy of exposing and combating misinformation through educating the public. We had a nice chat while waiting in line to get our share of catered lunch. I don’t really get starstruck when meeting people, but I think Captain Disillusion is as close as you can get to getting me starstruck for now, so I’m glad I was able to run into him at Open Sauce.)

No matter what the invited guest experience was like, the most important part of Open Sauce was still the exhibition hall. I concluded that, no matter how many special activities there were or who the special guests were, as long as the exhibition halls were the same as last year, it would still be a great convention. Fortunately, Open Sauce did indeed maintain its core identity, and the passionate energy of the exhibit halls remained the same as last year. I noticed that the convention this year was quite a bit larger than last year, so I was actually fairly impressed that they managed to scale it up to this degree, yet still not lose its charming identity in the exhibition halls.

My credentials gave me access to the exhibition halls across three total days, and I spent a good chunk of time on all three days exploring the halls. I walked multiple rounds through all three halls, made sure to try all the demonstrations I could, and even kept track of which ones I missed due to long lines so that I could go back and see it on a subsequent day. Just like last year, everyone was very welcoming and inviting, and I had a great time hearing about and trying out all the exhibits.

 
I’ll start with my favorite exhibit from this year, four-dimensional Counter-Strike. This little booth was set up with two computers from which you could play Counter-Strike, except some of the weapons were hooked up to real-life stimulants surrounding the gaming area.

Detonating a flashbang within range of your opponent would cause blindingly bright lights to turn on next to their computer station. Getting hit with an explosive grenade would cause the entire table to vibrate and make a rattling noise. Walking into the smoke of a smoke bomb would prompt a leaf blower to blow air in your face while a mist sprayed on you from behind.

My second favorite exhibit was a backpack with a motor inside that would gauge your lean and counter-rotate to balance you. The problem is that the motor is pretty heavy and it takes a split second for it to actually counter-rotate properly, so it perpetually feels like the backpack is both trying to kill you and save your life at the same time, which was a very amusing experience.

Here I am getting convinced into finding a Porygon in a Wii game… and ultimately failing.

Hello egg.

There was a crate with a sign that said “Open the crate… if you dare.” I dared.

Next to the daring crate was a computer with Super Crate Box on it. I don’t really play games anymore, but when I did, I was a keyboard-and-mouse gamer and am notoriously bad at using gaming controllers. Needless to say, I performed catastrophically poorly.

Hello hat.

I’m also notoriously bad at using joysticks because the movement feels vague to me and I can’t ever really tell how far in a direction I have to move the joystick in order for the command to register. … Again, needless to say, I performed monumentally poorly.

What I did better at was Crossy Road, but with real-life physical controls. Every time I jumped, a webcam would detect my movement and advance the bird one lane. I managed to get to the river… before tragically diving straight in and drowning.

This is a game of shuffleboard where the weights have sensors in them so they can detect where it ended up and automatically keep score for you. Unfortunately, they weren’t working that day, so I guess you could consider them to be extremely fragile hockey pucks instead.

This was a game where you had to keep a baby alive. I contributed to the effort by rocking the baby back and forth to relieve it of its tiredness, but then some random guy decided to grief and reached over to light a paper towel roll on fire (in-game), so I gave up and moved onto the next exhibit.

I think the objective of this game was to hack into some girl’s computer and read all her personal information. I couldn’t tell what else I needed to do beyond that, though.

This was a game about sushi where the controller was a samurai sword. You quickly unsheathe and sheathe the sword to slice the fish on screen and turn them into sashimi, and you press a button on the sword to block the aggressive fish from reaching you. This was a rhythm game, but the timing of the music was a bit off, so I didn’t do too well, but I got a hang of the delay later on and compensated, which made things better.

This game helped me discover that apparently I’m not very good at roguelikes either. At this point, it’s a mystery as to how I managed to help run a decently successful esports company several years ago.

Here is another photograph of me struggling with yet again another game.

Open Sauce this year had an outdoor section. There was a train out there blowing bubbles, so I decided to take a picture next to it. I didn’t realize how deceptively large the throughput of the bubbles were, and I managed to get soap residue all over my glasses from when the bubbles popped after hitting my face.

This chair is designed to force you to have great, balanced posture when seated; failure to do so will result in the stool tilting and trying to throw you off the edge. As you can see, I did a stellar job and was not at risk of drilling my face into the concrete block next to me at any point throughout the experience whatsoever.

This exhibit tested to see how good you were at balancing; you’d place one foot in the center and then use the other foot to move the gray sliders to match the distances as outlined on the screen beside the device.

Even though you might not be able to tell, I’m in this next photo as well; it apparently uses a camera to see what’s in front of it, but warps the image using circuitry in a pattern determined by which button you press on the controller.

My third favorite exhibit of Open Sauce this year was a robot that tore apart a microwave. As you can see, it was very popular when the demonstration was happening, so I wasn’t really able to get a good photograph of the destruction.

This was an activity where you press buttons to control a robot and attempt to knock out your opponent. I played against my cameraman and defeated him ruthlessly.

This was a modified version of Street Fighter where taking damage causes you to receive an electric shock through the joystick. I figured out a way to cheese it by only controlling the joystick with my fingernails instead of with the fleshy part of my fingers, but switched back to holding the joystick normally for the spirit of fair competition. I, again, played against my cameraman… but this time, I was the one who got defeated ruthlessly.

Here are some more photographs of random things I found interesting around the exhibition halls and stages.

And finally, here is a picture of me with one of my friends in the creator interview area. She agreed to be on my blog, but didn’t want her identity disclosed, so this is the solution I came up with.

Overall, Open Sauce remains my all-time favorite convention, with Open Sauce 2025 joining Open Sauce 2024 as my top two.

There are some elements that I liked better in 2024, and there are other elements that I liked better in 2025. However, the one thing I was overwhelmingly impressed at with 2025 is how much it had grown, yet still maintained its identity as a science fair instead of falling into the expected pipeline of becoming more like a conference. I think a lot of variables had to be controlled and accounted for to pull that off, which I applaud the Open Sauce team for.

I took a lot of pictures with con-goers, some of whom know me from my recent collaborations and guest appearances with some of my friends, while others dated back to my esports years with Tempo Storm; if you’re posting photos of us together on social media, feel free to tag me so I can browse through them.

 

—§—

 

Hello, Chef’s Table with Frank DeLoach at Bello by Sandro Nardone in Newport Beach, CA

by   •   Food, Highlights
 

After my quick trip to the East Coast earlier this month, I flew back to Southern California in preparation for my two-year Twitch moderator anniversary dinner with @PhummyLW. If none of that has any meaning to you, I have a very detailed explanation in last year’s blog post about dining at the Capital Grille in Costa Mesa, California that may serve as prerequisite reading if you’re interested in the backstory of what has now become an annual tradition.

This year, Phummy asked me to take him to Bello by Sandro Nardone, an Italian restaurant in Newport Beach, Orange County, California. They had apparently been experimenting with a newer format of their chef’s tasting menu, and after trialing it for a few weeks, they came up with a system that works best for them—two weekly seatings of up to six people each, every Friday at 6 PM and 8 PM. The first session of this finalized chef’s tasting menu was today, Friday, May 23, 2025 at 6 PM, so I got Phummy and myself booked as their very first customers for this iteration.

We were fortunate enough that, out of the six available seats, Phummy and I were the only two attendees, so we got a very personalized experience with Chef Frank DeLoach. On top of that, I realized that their system in general was very unique, and part-way through our meal, I realized why they called it their chef’s table instead of just a regular tasting menu.

Chef’s tasting menus are often composed of a set number of courses that come out in a certain order as predetermined by the chef. This allows you to experience a culinary story through the food, as told by the chef, in the chef’s style. I love chef’s tasting menus (and omakase experiences, which are the Japanese counterpart), and I scout out the best-rated ones whenever I’m in search for a good restaurant.

On the contrary, a chef’s table, as explained by Chef Frankie, focuses on the diner rather than the chef. There are dishes that the chef will suggest, but otherwise, it is more of a freestyle experience where the chef makes realtime adjustments with the food offerings depending on the feedback and preferences of the diners. Thus, it functionally ends up being less of a traditional chef’s tasting menu experience and more of just having a private chef custom-curating you a multi-course meal over the span of a couple hours.

 
I was headed over to the restaurant from deep into Los Angeles County, so the estimated travel time was about an hour and a half. In typical Southern California fashion, the traffic got increasingly worse the longer I drove, and while originally anticipating arriving 15 minutes early, I ended up being 12 minutes late.

Upon my entrance, Phummy had already been seated and was nibbling on some prosciutto. I joined in and ate my portion. I don’t particularly like prosciutto, especially when it is just the dry-cured ham on its own without anything else to go along with it, but with that being said, this prosciutto still had a very rich, intense, clean flavor that I think fans of prosciutto would enjoy and appreciate a lot.

Our first antipasto dish was a bruschetta topped with strawberries, cheese, and herbs. This is literally the best bruschetta I have ever had in my entire life.

I’m generally not a fan of cheese because my taste buds love to pick up and focus on only the moldy flavor of cheese, but this cheese atop the bruschetta was gloriously delicious. It was smooth and creamy, and the flavor only had the “nice” parts of the cheese without any of the pungency, intensity, or moldiness. The texture was soft and delicate, and it coated the inside of my mouth in a way that contributed its flavor uniformly across every time I bit down to chew.

The bread was prepared to perfection. To me, bruschetta doesn’t have the best reputation because the bread usually comes out at such an inconvenient texture where it’s not exactly the consistency of a cracker, but it’s still hard and sharp enough that it cuts the inside of your mouth. This bruschetta’s bread had the perfect amount of resistance given to each bite where it added a great balance of firmness and softness.

Lately, I’ve seen some viral online videos about egregiously expensive but orgasmically delicious strawberries, and although I have not tried those strawberries, I feel like they would be on par with the ones on this bruschetta. These strawberries tasted like nature-made candy, but rather than pure sweetness, it was somehow like a combination of sweet and umami.

Next was some crudo topped with macadamia nuts, cucumbers, red onions, and other greens, bathing inside a coconut sauce.

With how much sushi I eat, I have obviously eaten a lot of crudo. Crudo at Japanese restaurants is often a hit-or-miss, and rather than hamachi crudo, I have almost always just preferred plain yellowtail sashimi instead because of how sour crudo ends up being.

This crudo had none of the downsides that I have experienced in the past with crudo. The coconut sauce was mild but still flavorful, and the vegetables were only pickled to a point where they had a subtle kick, so neither the sauce nor the toppings pierced through or overwhelmed the flavor of the raw fish.

Next was a minced chicken dish wrapped in some leaves (I forgot what kind of leaves, and I also forgot what other ingredients were included in the dish).

This had a balanced meaty and earthy flavor, but unfortunately, it was so overwhelmingly salty for me that it distracted and detracted from some of the flavor. I mentioned that to the chef, and I am pretty sure he took that into consideration for future dishes, as nothing else served later during the dinner was too salty anymore.

Next up was our pasta dish. I think this shape of pasta is called strozzapreti, but I don’t recall with certainty.

The sauce was made with a mixture of seafood and other portions of leftover ingredients that would otherwise not make it into main entrées. It had somewhat of a nostalgic flavor to it that reminded me of homemade stew.

Some people take their leftover scraps from home cooking and throw it all into a simmering soup; this dish’s sauce was basically similar to that. When restaurants prepare dishes for presentation, a significant portion of perfectly-fine ingredients don’t make the final cut due to their physical appearance, so it is great when it ends up being used in a sauce rather than being wasted. With that being said, when this dish’s sauce was prepared, it seems like it was aiming for that “scrap stew” kind of flavor, but the quality of the ingredients were so high that you could easily tell it wasn’t just scraps.

This is probably unsurprising if you know how much I like fish and seafood, but this pasta dish ended up being my second favorite course of the meal (behind the bruschetta).

After our pasta, we were served some fish alongside tomatoes, cucumbers, fennel fronds, and olive oil.

I was impressed at the preparation of the tomatoes and cucumbers—the chef managed to reduce it down to only the tomato and cucumber flavor, without any of the other tanginess, tartness, or sourness that you might find with some fruits. It was almost as if these tomatoes and cucumbers were real-life examples of what flavor you would aim for if you were manufacturing a perfect tomato and cucumber flavor in a laboratory.

The fish was unremarkable, but in a good way. It was a clean, straightforward, smooth, untarnished fish flavor that I could happily eat everyday and would enjoy it every single time.

I also appreciated the temperature difference between the slightly chilled fruit and the warm fish—that added a fun dynamic to the consumption experience.

Coming up next was a beef entrée.

As what was supposed to be our final entrée, we were served steak with beet sauce topped with leek and pistachio.

This is some of the strongest beef flavor in a steak that I’ve ever had. Normally, steak with this level of intensity also usually comes with some gameyness, but this steak was very clean and pure in flavor. The ratio of fat cap to lean meat was perfect. Adding a bit of leek to each bite served as a decorative but subtle enhancement to the texture. The beet sauce helped amplify the beefiness of the steak, making it taste even deeper and richer.

The presentation was also quite unique, in that it basically came out like a piece of abstract art. I don’t see that too often because it’s tricky to properly straddle the line between a dish appearing as abstract art as opposed to just a mess, but I think this one pulled it off decently well.

While eating our steak, I asked Phummy if this was his favorite dish of the night, which he confirmed. I figured as much, because it was one of the more basic dishes without too many complicated flavors; it just took the concept of steak and took it far, doing it in the best way possible without any extra fanciness added to it.

Of course, preferring basic flavors is not inherently a negative thing. Just because you like simple dishes does not mean that you’re not able to discern the quality of the ingredients and the excellence in culinary preparation. With that being said, the chef made sure Phummy understood as such, and let him know that there is no problem with the steak being his favorite dish.

This evolved into a conversation where the chef mentioned how some people just really love pizza and will ask for pizza at the chef’s table, and Phummy pointed out that he too loves pizza. Chef Frankie was happy to hear that, and made us a Neapolitan pizza for us as a complementary supplement to the regular tasting menu.

This was a great pizza. I would describe it as pristine simplicity—it used only the core and minimum ingredients needed to make a pizza, so there were no distracting flavors. With each bite, all you got was pure, blissful pizza, and nothing else. The crust was also a perfect consistency that made chewing it satisfying.

From what I noticed, I think there was very minimal seasoning on it. Instead, the char on the crust and base of the pizza served as a substitute for seasoning, adding a more natural-tasting enhancement to the overall pizza flavor profile.

For dessert, we got a piece of cake and some mashed pineapple with roasted almond ice cream on top.

Even now, I’m unsure how I feel about this dessert. Pineapple is my second-favorite fruit behind kiwi, so I obviously liked that. However, I couldn’t really pinpoint how I felt about the cake. On top of that, this was the first time I had ever had roasted almond ice cream, so this was a very new flavor combination for me.

Here is a wider shot of the kitchen; at the chef’s table, we were able to get a clear view of everything going on during our meal.

Here is a photo of the front of the restaurant—just an unassuming building in the Newport North Shopping Center.

Chef’s Table ×2 $ 370.00
Service charge (20%) $  74.00
Sales tax (7.75%) $  28.68
Tock booking fee $   5.00
Total $ 477.68

The table to the right shows what I paid.

Each ticket to the Chef’s Table cost $185. They charged a 20% service fee in lieu of gratuity, which was prominently disclosed during booking by way of just adding that 20% directly onto the marketed price when selecting the Chef’s Table. There are some restaurants that say a service fee is charged and that tips are not expected, yet they give you a receipt at the end of your meal to add on an optional tip anyway; Bello by Sandro Nardone did not do that, and they did not even give us the possibility of adding an extra gratuity at the end. The booking fee was charged by Tock and did not go to the restaurant.

Everything was prepaid at the time of booking the reservation. Pricing-wise, this was one of the most refreshing and honest payment experiences I’ve ever had at a restaurant. It’s always annoying when a restaurant advertises a certain per-person price for a multi-course meal or special dining experience, but because of optional add-ons and mandatory fees, you end up paying double what you expected. Because of having to regularly deal with that, I especially appreciated Bello by Sandro Nardone’s transparency.

This is probably some of the best service I’ve ever received at a restaurant. I’m used to receiving personalized attention from chefs when sitting at sushi bars for omakase, but Bello took it to an entirely new level. It was blatantly obvious that they wanted to ensure we had a great time, and they were querying and keeping track of our preferences to maximize our satisfaction with the meal.

The overall quality of the food was amazing. The portion sizes were also refreshingly large and filling. I felt like I concluded my dinner full of only great food, with no “filler dishes.”

This is definitely an expensive meal, but if this is within your budgetary means, I highly recommend the Chef’s Table with Chef Frank DeLoach at Bello by Sandro Nardone. I don’t know what the à la carte menu is like, and I did not have an opportunity to meet Sandro Nardone himself, but Chef Frankie (and one other staff member whose name I regretfully forgot) gave us a top-tier experience.

 

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Hello, Sushi by Scratch at the SLS Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California

by   •   Food, Highlights
 

For my final dinner in Southern California before heading out for my next trip, I dined with Sushi by Scratch at the SLS Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California.

While the chefs were preparing for dinner service, we were provided with a welcome beverage and canapé service. Our beverage was a minty iced tea; our first small bite was a miniature tuna hand roll topped with salmon roe, and our second item was a very decorated chawanmushi (Japanese egg custard).

Afterwards, we were brought into the main dining area. Sushi by Scratch’s omakase experience is composed of 16 pieces of nigiri: yellowtail, fluke, ocean trout, scallop, striped jack, Japanese sea bream, golden eye snapper, albacore, tuna, amberjack, black sea bream, tuna belly, wagyu, bone marrow, eel, and sea urchin.

We also got a non-alcoholic beverage pairing to go along with the omakase, which came with three unique drinks spread out across our meal between every 5-6 pieces of nigiri.

After our 16 bites of sushi, our meal concluded with a dessert. My friend had celebrated a birthday the prior week, so I wrote a short note of that in the reservation details; we didn’t get any complementary extras, but they did put a little celebratory candle in her dessert for the occasion.

After this meal, Sushi by Scratch joined my small set of all-time favorite restaurants.

If you were paying attention to the photographs, you may have noticed that each piece of nigiri had some sort of unique sauce, topping, and/or garnish. This is what made Sushi by Scratch stand out from any other sushi restaurant I’ve been to.

All the fish they used obviously had a baseline of being very high-quality, but the extras they added on to each bite made it truly stand out. These combinations were novel enough that I, as someone who eats an insanely large amount of sushi on a regular basis, still found every single bite to be a completely new experience. I could obviously taste and recognize most of the individual ingredients, but each bite’s combined flavor profile as a whole was always something new that I had never had before.

At first, I thought the portion sizes were a bit small, but after the first few pieces of nigiri, I realized that a lot of the value you get from what you’re paying for at Sushi by Scratch is not just the amount of food, but the ability to experience the chefs’ innovative recipes and flavor combinations. It is common to go to an omakase experience and try a few experimental dishes, but it is rare to near-impossible to find a spot that adds a facet of originality and inventiveness to literally every single thing they serve.

What made this meal extra special, which ultimately just came down to luck, was that my friend and I were fortunate enough to be the only two people being served during our particular time slot. This obviously made for a much more private and cozy experience. It also allowed us to interact with the chefs on an ongoing basis throughout our meal, helping us learn more about their background and the items they were serving.

If you’re familiar with my food blog posts, you know that I usually put a cost breakdown of what I paid. Unfortunately, when I paid for the meal, I was only provided with a final transaction confirmation rather than a fully itemized receipt, so I don’t have exact prices. With that being said, I can come up with some reasonable estimates.

The base price for omakase was $185 per person. We opted to do a caviar add-on, which I believe got us extra caviar on three additional pieces of nigiri that wouldn’t have otherwise had caviar, for $65 per person; I thought this was reasonable, considering that a lot of restaurants in major cities sell caviar bumps for $20 each. I’m not sure how much the beverage pairing was, but my guess is that it was approximately $50 per person. There was a mandatory 20% service fee in lieu of gratuity, and sales tax in Los Angeles should be 9.75%. The final total charge was US$780.06.

That is definitely a big number, but don’t let that scare you away—just opting for the core omakase experience for $185 per person, which would end up being $240 per person after the mandatory service fee and sales tax, is already an amazing meal. I like caviar in general, and the drinks were delicious, but even without them, you’ll still get to fully enjoy the crux and soul of the meal.

As a side note, as I mentioned at the beginning, the Beverly Hills location of Sushi by Scratch is inside the SLS hotel, which offers valet parking only and charges $20 for it. We avoided this by going to the nearby Beverly Center first, parking inside their parking garage, doing some shopping, then walking a couple blocks to the restaurant afterwards. I didn’t confirm whether Beverly Center has dynamic pricing, but for us, we only had to pay $4 by the time we made our way back and headed out. I think this is a good alternative if you are not a fan of other people touching and driving your vehicle, want to get in a short walk to stay active and healthy, and/or want to save a little bit of money (maybe to put it towards that caviar upsell).

Overall, I highly recommend Sushi by Scratch… but with a caveat. For lack of a better way to put this, I think Sushi by Scratch is an “intermediate-level” restaurant. Anyone—even sushi first-timers—can obviously have an enjoyable meal here, but I think you need at least a little bit of sushi experience to truly conceptualize, understand, and internalize why Sushi by Scratch is so special.

 

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January 2025 investment portfolio breakdown

by   •   Finance, Highlights
 

Disclaimer: I am not a registered investment advisor. The information contained in this blog post is strictly anecdotal and should not be construed as financial advice. If you are seeking guidance, consult a licensed and certified professional.

It’s been over a year since I’ve last done an investment portfolio breakdown—my most recent one was on January 1, 2024 to cover my end-of-2023 portfolio. I figured one year is enough time for there to be enough changes in my portfolio to make it worth doing another breakdown, so I decided to write this one for the beginning of 2025.

Cash

At just a percent and a half, this is a significantly lower amount of cash than you would see in my portfolio compared to if I had pulled the numbers on December 31, 2024 like I usually do for end-of-year portfolio breakdowns, instead of January 6, 2025 like I did for this one. I did this intentionally because I didn’t want to make it seem like I hold onto more cash than I actually do.

I have a lot of cash in my savings account and settlement funds on December 31 because I have it ready to go for when contribution limits for tax-advantaged accounts (e.g., Roth/Traditional IRAs, SEP-IRA, HSA, etc.) reset on the 1st of the calendar year; a few days into the year, I’ve invested it all via those aforementioned accounts and have minimal cash left.

I am mostly a believer of maximizing your gains by way of maximizing the amount of time you are in the market, so on an ongoing basis, I only hold onto about 6 months’ worth of core living expenses as an emergency fund, then put the rest in investments as soon as possible. The way I hold this cash has not changed since last year—I use a Discover Bank savings account as my main bank account, then keep my settlement funds in the Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund (VMFXX) on Vanguard and the Fidelity Gov­ern­ment Money Market Fund (SPAXX) on Fidelity.

   1.519%

Domestic broad market index funds

As you might have expected, domestic broad market index funds account for the largest portion of my portfolio, and was also the category into which I invested the most new money in 2024 alongside international broad market index funds. Even though I like exploring fun new investment opportunities and partaking in risky new ventures once in a while, an overwhelming majority of my portfolio is in safe investments.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I opted to buy Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund Admiral Shares (VHYAX) because it seemed to historically tend to be safer during times of high turmoil and instability, but now I’m back to buying almost exclusively Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX) in this category. Ratio-wise as of right now, for every ~$3 I have invested in VHYAX, I have ~$7 invested in VTSAX.

For money I have in Fidelity for my Health Savings Account and Fidelity Charitable account, my broad market index fund of choice is the Fidelity ZERO Total Market Index Fund (FZROX).

  44.264%

International broad market index funds

Two years ago, I ended up selling a very large portion of my exposure to international broad market index funds by way of Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTIAX) for tax-loss-harvesting purposes. After waiting out the appropriate wash sale period, I started buying back into international broad market index funds to re-diversify my portfolio.

Along with domestic broad market index funds, this was the category in which I invested the most new money in 2024. My fund of choice throughout 2024 was the Fidelity ZERO International Index Fund (FZILX).

This allocation percentage is better than last year, but I still think it’s a little bit low; this will continue to be the category into which I invest the most throughout 2025.

   5.094%

Bonds

During the pandemic, I purchased Series I Savings Bonds from the United States Department of the Treasury due to their very high inflation-tracked interest rates. Since then, I’ve sort of just let them sit in my TreasuryDirect account to accrue interest and haven’t really given them much attention. Beyond that, everything else lumped into this category that isn’t with the Treasury is in Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VBTLX).

I’m still young and I have decently high risk tolerance, so I’m probably not going to be buying any more bonds outright. However, it still acts as a form of portfolio diversification and stability, so I likely won’t actively sell and reallocate this money anytime soon either.

   4.274%

Target date funds

I split my target date funds into their own separate category because their compositions change depending on the current year. Target date funds are intended to be a hands-off investment fund where you pick one with the closest year available to the date you anticipate on retiring, and the fund will automatically adjust risk to minimize the likelihood of you losing a substantial amount of money close to retirement due to market volatility.

I use target date funds in my tax-advantaged retirement accounts because it’s a way for me to further diversify my portfolio, but from a different angle: in the extremely unlikely but non-zero chance that I become completely unable to manage my own investments in the future, presumably through some unpredictable severe mental and/or physical incapacitation, and if my caretaker ends up being someone who is financially illiterate, then at least the money in my retirement accounts will remain steady, even if the markets fall into mass turmoil right before I reach 59½ years old. Of course, this only applies to my retirement accounts; I personally self-manage all my other assets everywhere else.

Right now, most of this is split across the Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX), Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Fund (VFFVX), and Van­guard Target Retirement 2050 Fund (VFIFX). As you can see by the names of the funds, I have it split across three different target years. This is because I am doing far better financially than I had ever imagined I would be when I was in my 20s, and I am foreseeing an earlier and earlier retirement year as I get older, so I shifted from buying the 2060 fund to the 2055 fund and now the 2050 fund. I plan on continuing to buy more into 2050, while leaving my 2060/2055 allocation alone, and not touching a 2045 fund due to it being too soon to make sense for the purposes of a government-regulated retirement account.

According to Vanguard’s website, as of December 31, 2024, my target funds are roughly distributed as 55% domestic total market index funds, 35% international total market index funds, 7% domestic total market bonds, and 3% international total market bonds.

  20.860%

Real estate investment trusts (REITs)

There haven’t really been any interesting developments on the real estate side of my portfolio. All my real estate exposure is still held via Van­guard Real Es­tate Index Fund Admiral Shares (VGSLX).

I don’t really use social media anymore, but that doesn’t make me immune to doom scrolling—I’ve caught myself losing track of time and getting sucked into Zillow on several occasions. I think that’s productive though, as it means I’ve been looking for good real estate purchase opportunities and keeping tabs on the state of the real estate market in general.

I will likely end up selling my allocation in this category to use as a down payment if I end up purchasing a property (which will also help me do some tax loss harvesting, as this REIT hasn’t been performing too well), but until then, I don’t think I will be taking great initiative or otherwise doing anything majorly proactive in the foreseeable future when it comes to real estate.

   6.570%

Individual stocks and private companies

In 2024, all of my tax loss harvesting came out of this category. I sold my down positions in Stellantis, N.V. (STLA), Cloudflare (NET), and Under Armour (UAA). Keep in mind that this does not mean I’ve lost faith in these companies; it just means the timing was right for me to use these companies’ stock for tax benefits. Ram still makes my favorite pickup trucks, and Cloudflare still has a huge part in allowing you to read this very page on my website.

I’m still holding onto stock in Marriott International, Inc. (MAR), T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS), and TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (TKO). Comically, I am also still holding onto my single share of Nxu, Inc. (NXU), which is down to about one-tenth of one percent of what I bought in at when they were still Atlis Motor Vehicles, Inc. I guess leaving it in my brokerage account acts as a continued reminder of the risks of investing in individual securities. And of course, I still have my unsponsored American depository receipts of Nexon Co., Ltd. (NEXOY); you can read the silly story behind that one in my previous investment breakdown.

As a side note, in case it was not clear already, I am not including my equity ownership of AVY Entertainment, Inc., d.b.a. Tempo in this portfolio breakdown, not only because I own a combination of stock options and common stock (and no preferred stock) so it would be tricky to pinpoint a proper valuation on it anyway, but also because it would greatly skew the percentages in the breakdown. As a consolation prize, I present to you a fun fact: later in 2025, I will be celebrating my ten-year anniversary working at Tempo.

   2.739%

Cryptocurrency

What originally started as my “gambling fund” ended up becoming a significant component of my investment portfolio. I first bought into cryptocurrency as a way to learn about it hands-on, only putting in money I was okay with losing entirely. Since then, and especially over the past two years, cryptocurrency has spiked substantially in value such that it had the biggest increase in my portfolio allocation percentage, even with me barely buying any more of it.

Although I have some cryptocurrency in a self-custodied hardware wallet, I actually have a substantial part of my cryptocurrency exposure via funds with my brokerage. Namely, I have varying amounts of shares of the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC), Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF (BTC), Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (BITW), and ProShares Bitcoin ETF (BITO). As you can see, my collection of funds is fairly diverse, ranging from broad market funds to Bitcoin to Bitcoin futures. An overwhelming majority of these have just been positions I’ve sat on for years, and will continue to sit on for the foreseeable future as a form of portfolio diversification.

A question I get asked occasionally is why I don’t just convert all of my holdings into actual cryptocurrency held in my hardware wallet. I have two major reasons: The first is that selling shares of these funds to use the proceeds to purchase actual cryptocurrency would trigger a capital gains taxable event, and I would like to postpone that to a point in the future that could potentially be more tax-favorable to me. The second is that knowing how to manage hardware wallets is not quite mainstream yet, so in the extremely unlikely but non-zero chance that I suddenly die and my assets get passed on to my beneficiaries, I don’t want to burden them with having a substantial amount of money mysteriously locked behind what appears to be a USB drive.

  12.795%

International currency

This is a new investment category as of 2024, inspired by a handful of people recommending that I look into expanding my international exposure not only by purchasing more broad market index funds, but also by buying currency funds. I’m still not too knowledgeable about international matters, but I figured that, if I’m going to invest so much into cryptocurrency, I might as well also invest in foreign currency.

After a (somewhat brief) session of research, I decided on purchasing shares of the Invesco CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE) and Invesco CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (FXY). As of today, Invesco also has ETFs for the Australian dollar, British pound sterling, Canadian dollar, and Swiss franc; I may look into buying some shares of those in the near future as well.

   0.962%

Precious metals

I bought shares of Fidelity Select Gold Portfolio (FSAGX) during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to get gold exposure without physically purchasing and storing gold bars in my closet. Since then, I’ve been fairly uninterested in diving deeper in this area, so it has just existed in my Fidelity account without receiving any of my attention.

   0.599%

Fine art, and other collectibles

A few years ago, I participated in StartEngine Collectibles Fund I, LLC’s Regulation A+ as a unique way to get exposure to the fine art and collectibles market without having to physically buy and store any of it myself.

Since then, StartEngine has been horrible to work with. They refunded portions of my investment money, presumably because they did not meet minimum funding goals for certain items, but they did so without ever communicating anything about it (and still have not to this day), so as far as I’m aware, it could’ve basically been that I just inadvertently gave them thousands of dollars as a free loan.

I saw that they had a secondary market open on their platform, so I’m wondering if I can just dump this at-cost and be done with it, but this is such an insignificantly small amount of money that I have not been motivated to do anything about it yet.

   0.324%

That concludes my portfolio breakdown and summary of what I’ve been up to investment-wise over the past calendar year.

To wrap up, I want to reiterate that I am simply sharing how I invest my money, and I am in no way saying you should copy my strategy. Keep in mind that I am not a financial expert, and be aware that some of my investment decisions are rooted in me doing what I think would be fun or interesting at the time, rather than any rational or logical thought. Everyone’s situation is uniquely different, so you should not make changes to your own portfolio’s investment class distributions to match my own. Instead, consider consulting a licensed financial advisor so you can come up with a plan that works for you.

 

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Hello, Yakiniku Shodai in San Francisco, California

by   •   Food, Highlights
 

For my final night in San Francisco, my friend and I had dinner at Yakiniku Shodai, a high-end Japanese restaurant in the Civic Center area southeast of the Fillmore District.

Known for its wagyu, Yakiniku Shodai has two different tasting menu options—a basic one for US$150 per person and a full experience for US$225 per per­son. We opted to go for the full set because, not only was I hungry, but I also figured I might as well go all-in while I’m in town and have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so, as I don’t really ever visit the San Francisco Bay Area unless it is for a very compelling reason.

My friend works remotely on East Coast hours and wanted an early dinner, so we booked the first available reservation slot at 5:30 PM PDT and were the first ones in the restaurant.

After being seated, the chef explained how the tasting menu process works. We then received a set of sides—pickled cucumbers, seasoned bean sprouts, and kimchi. We also got a small dish of lemon juice, used to offset some of the fattiness of the wagyu to come.

We also received a small bowl of beef broth with mushroom and green onion.

We were seated at the end of the side of the eating area, as close to a “command” position as possible, which allowed us to clearly spectate what the chefs and cooks were doing (as well as observe the other guests, once they arrived).

Our first meat was thin-sliced Australian wagyu beef tongue, served with seasoned onions and green onions.

The chef cooked only one side of the beef tongue and took it off the grill when it still appeared blue rare, but the heat momentum continued cooking it to a perfect rare by the time it was ready to eat.

Beef tongue is my favorite cut of beef, and this exceeded my expectations. It was the most tender and delicious beef tongue I’ve ever tasted.

Next was thin-cut American wagyu short rib with fresh wasabi and seasoned kelp strips, and thick-cut American wagyu zabuton topped with plum paste.

I had never tasted anything like this plum paste before, and it was incredible. There was definitely plum in it, but it wasn’t just plum—there was an in­de­scrib­a­ble additional flavor in there that made it uniquely sweet, and I cannot for the life of me pinpoint what it could’ve possibly been.

Eating back-to-back cuts of wagyu can feel very filling due to the extremely high fat content, so we were regularly served palate cleansers. For this in­ter­mis­sion, we were given some zucchini and mushrooms seasoned with salt and pepper.

Our next portion of meat was thick-cut Australian wagyu harami skirt steak with barbecue sauce.

Note that this was a very light Japanese-style barbecue sauce, not the type of thick American BBQ sauce you’d find in the United States.

Our next palate cleanser was the house special salad. I really appreciated the frequency with which they mixed in vegetable dishes, as it really helped bal­ance out the overall flavor storyline.

The chef took us on a brief detour with some seasonal seafood—scallop. This was the thickest, juiciest, most tender, and most flavor-rich piece of scallop I’ve ever tasted in my life.

It was time to go back to the meat. Next up was thin-sliced Japanese A5 wagyu oyster blade, served with barbecue sauce and wasabi.

Our second portion of Japanese A5 wagyu was thick-cut tenderloin, seasoned with garlic sauce.

Although my friend and I opted for the full set, some of the other diners who had arrived after us were opting for the smaller menu. While enjoying my meal, I was able to watch the chefs prepare their dishes, which served both as extra entertainment as well as a good learning opportunity.

Next up was what ended up being my second favorite item of the dinner—Japanese A5 olive wagyu ichibo served thin-sliced nigiri style with caviar and truffle.

I’ve always known truffle to have a very strong flavor, but the truffle used on this wagyu nigiri was very mild.

The flavor bal­ance of this nigiri was incredible—the intensity of the wagyu, caviar, and truffle was perfectly equal, and no single flavor was o­ver­whelm­ing, so it truly felt like you could taste the richness of every single individual flavor depending on what you were mentally focusing on.

We were slowly approaching the end of our meal. Our second-to-last main dish was salmon and ikura with a small sprinkling of edible flower.

The grand finale dish was yakishabu don, made with thinly-sliced Japanese A5 wagyu striploin over rice, topped with raw egg yolk and truffle.

This combination manifested as a beautifully shimmering golden sauce over the wagyu rice bowl.

Our dessert was a refreshing frozen yogurt. It was only subtly sweet, which allowed the yogurt flavor to really shine.

Shodai Set ×2 $ 450.00
Mandatory gratuity (20%) $  90.00
SF HCSO surcharge (4.8%) $  21.60
Sales tax $  48.44
Total $ 610.04

The table on the right shows how much we paid.

You might have noticed that I didn’t really give many thoughts on the various cuts of wagyu. The rea­son for that is… my thoughts are basically the same for all of them. Pretty much every single piece of meat I ate during this meal ranked as a top best cut of meat I have ever tasted in my life.

I don’t eat anywhere near enough Japanese A5 BMS 12 or Australian MSA 1100+ grade 9 wagyu in or­der to compare it on an appropriate scale, and if you compare any meat of that quality to anything else, that ultra-high-end wagyu is just going to be indisputably better by a chasmic margin.

I cannot put in words how much I was impressed by our chef Chris Yuen. He managed to cook every single piece of meat to absolute perfection, and he appeared to do it effortlessly. I would be overjoyed at myself if I had even 5% of his cooking ability.

I’m not too happy about the 20% mandatory gratuity. I would have preferred for them to just set the price at $270 per person instead of $225 and make themselves a no-tipping establishment—that would’ve felt much better than making it look like there was a nearly hundred dollar hid­den fee. Gratuity is meant to allow diners to show gratitude, and it just doesn’t feel the same when it’s forced. This would also probably be particularly unsettling for in­ter­na­tion­al guests who may come from cultures where the concept of tipping does not exist.

Regardless, this restaurant has easily landed itself in my top three favorite restaurants of all time, alongside Utzutzu and Masamitsu. A meal coming in at $270 per person before taxes and fees is obviously unrealistic for most people, but if you’re ever in the San Francisco area and this pricepoint is man­age­a­ble for you (remember that there is a lower-cost option as well), I highly recommend Yakiniku Shodai.

 

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