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.

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.

This one… requires a little bit of backstory.

Over a decade ago, I used to stream a lot on Twitch, a live broadcasting platform serving as the gaming arm of Justin.tv. Since then, I stopped streaming consistently, but I do still hit that coveted “Start Streaming” button once in a while, most frequently when I’m making a guest appearance on a show, but some­times when I’m just gaming with friends.

May 12, 2023 was one of those days. After a long and treacherous journey through the first 20 levels of World of War­craft: Classic in hardcore mode with my friend Doug Wreden, we managed to make it to the first pair of dungeons and I streamed footage of us clearing Wailing Caverns. During that stream, I gave moderator privileges to a user named @PhummyLW so he could use Twitch’s Channel Points Predictions feature to make the broadcast a bit more interactive. I picked him because Doug recognized his name as an active member of his own Twitch community.

Since then, I’ve been streaming once in a while, and Phummy kept returning to watch and chat. Moderators are usually responsible for ensuring com­pli­ance with the broadcaster’s rules, but considering that the only rule I have for my viewers and chatters is to follow the Twitch Terms of Service and Com­mu­ni­ty Guidelines, and I use AutoMod to automatically moderate my chat, there is very little for my human moderators to do. So, Phummy con­tin­ued to stick around to run Channel Points Predictions where relevant.

To go on a tangent for a little bit, I am not a fan of the traditional streamer-moderator relationship. I don’t know if this is just because I ended up build­ing a lot of friendships with female Twitch streamers throughout the years as a consequence of my industry of work, but when I see my friends’ mod­er­a­tors, a lot of them give off the impression of matching a lot of the negative stereotypes—a lonely man who is socially awkward and is dedicating a sub­stan­tial amount of time supporting and moderating for these women due to developing a parasocial relationship and holding onto the non-existent chance that the streamer will reciprocate their love after seeing how much the moderator has done for the streamer. I think this is extremely unhealthy, and I go out of my way to call it out when I see it—not only because I want it to stop before it goes too far and my friends end up with resentful stalkers with motives rooted in unrequited love, but also because I don’t want these men to be exploited and suffer through inevitable pain once something hap­pens that snaps them back into reality.

One of the reasons I liked having Phummy around is that he just seemed like a very normal guy with a normal and healthy lifestyle who also just hap­pens to have a hobby of watching Twitch streams once in a while. He also seemed to be aligned with my opinion on being strongly against unhealthy parasocial relation­ships—so much so that he would joke about it and create satirical situations pretending like he and I had some deep bond and lifelong close friendship, using comedy to exaggerate how absurd some of these situations with other streamers and moderators have gotten.

Not too long ago, Phummy started counting down the days in my Discord server (which, if you’re not familiar, is sort of like a real-time forum and chat channel which is reserved for paid subscribers to my Twitch channel). I didn’t know what he was counting down to, but I knew he was cooking up some kind of joke.

Yesterday, May 13, 2024, I got my answer. In the morning, he messaged me wishing me a happy anniversary of him becoming my Twitch moderator. He sent a bunch of heart emojis and even translated a portion into Korean about how he looks forward to the next year ahead. I figured he was going to come up with some prank like this, so I just replied “ok” and went back to sleep.

A few hours later, I realized there was a big problem. Remember how I said earlier that my World of Warcraft: Classic stream was on May 12, 2023? Phummy was one day late to wish me a happy anniversary. At first I couldn’t have been any more indifferent about this entire situation, but now that I had found out that Phummy messed up his own prank, I was ex­tremely invested.

I let Phummy know of his critical error, and he replied in due sarcasm, profusely apologizing and asking if the anniversary was ruined and whether he should cancel the celebration dinner reservation. Of course, there was never a dinner reservation, but I decided I would stonewall him and take his joke in the most literal way possible. I told him that if he books a dinner reservation for us tonight at a high-end restaurant of his choice, I would show up for our “anniversary date.”

So he did.

… So I did too.

 
When Phummy booked the reservation, he wrote in the comments that this dinner was for a special occasion—an anniversary. Apparently this restaurant took that note very seriously, because when we arrived, they had our table… specially prepared.

The funny part is that they gave us a yellow rose, which often symbolizes friendship, but still scattered red heart confetti over our table and drew red hearts on the note.

While we were browsing through the menu, we received a bowl of complementary bread with a side of butter. The variety of bread in this bowl was nice, and it was a lot better than the average bowl of free bread that you get from other restaurants.

Our first appetizer was fresh oyster on half shells atop ice and with a side of mignonette sauce and lemon. There was nothing particularly remarkable about these oysters, but sometimes, that’s a good thing—they tasted crisp and clean, and served as a solid start to our meal.

Next was steak tartare with capers, chives, sweet onion, hard-boiled egg, and brioche toasts.

I had never had beef tartare before with hard-boiled egg in it, and today I discovered that I really like that flavor combination. I’m a big fan of onions, so I ob­vi­ous­ly liked that ingredient too. The capers added a nice touch to the flavor—they’re usually a bit too sour, but these were milder and balanced the umami of the steak well.

I wish there was a little bit of mild oil to help mix together the ingredients, but overall, this was one of my favorite tartare dishes I’ve ever had.

For my entrée, I ordered seared tenderloin with butter-poached lobster tails.

I ordered the tenderloin cooked rare, and it was prepared perfectly. I made sure to slice against the grain, and it ended up being the most tender steak I’ve ever had, up to the point where the first bite was actually surprising. It took “melt in your mouth” to a whole other level.

The lobster tails were also great. Something I dislike about lobster is how butter is often overused during its preparation, but this restaurant used just enough butter that the added flavor was recognizable but subtle.

Phummy ordered a 10 oz. filet mignon.

For dessert, we got a crème brûlée with seasonal berries. As you can see from the photograph, they continued the festivities by writing “Happy An­ni­ver­sa­ry” in chocolate on the plate.

I found this to be the most mediocre dish out of our entire meal. It didn’t really taste like what I’d expect from a crème brûlée, and the layer of hardened caramelized sugar didn’t have the satisfying crunch that people come to expect from crème brûlée.

Here are some shots of the dining area and exterior of the restaurant:

I treated Phummy to the meal; the table to the right shows how much I paid.

I had an amusingly good time. In case it wasn’t clearly implied from the story, I have only ever interacted with Phummy through the Internet and this was my first time ever meeting him in-person. I’m known to be someone to do some unexpectedly chaotic and impromptu things, and I feel like driving a round-trip of almost a hundred miles relative to where I was staying in Los Angeles County and spending over $250 on dinner seems characteristic of some of the strange things I would do.

With that being said, I think this exceeded my threshold of comfort because Phummy does still keep an eye out on chat for me when I’m streaming and takes care of removing spammy advertising bots and other egregiously intrusive chatters that AutoMod does not catch, so I was far more willing to treat him to a nice din­ner as a gesture of appreciation, considering that he doesn’t formally accept payment from me.

On top of that, Phummy also occasionally live streams on Twitch himself for fun, so I had enough footage of him online for me to watch and determine that he wasn’t some unstable and dangerous person. In fact, he was very sociable, and if anything, he was the one carrying our conversation while I was basically busy role playing as a professional competitive eater and stuffing my mouth with good food.

The restaurant he picked was great. I did not expect the food quality to be that high, and I feel like this whole joke ended up coming to a best-case pos­si­ble conclusion.

… I guess this may be the birth of a new annual tradition.

If you’ve been following my website for a while, you know that I like going to high-end fine dining restaurants. I’m especially a fan of multi-course meals, tasting menus, omakase experiences, and other “chef’s choice” formats of eating.

Last night, I decided to go to one of the world’s most famous and recognizable restaurants for a six-course meal: McDonald’s.

As my appetizer, I got a four-piece Chicken McNuggets®.

I ordered this with a side of the new, limited-edition Savory Chili WcDonald’s Sauce, but unfortunately, I did not receive it with my order. This tends to happen to me irritatingly frequently with special sauces. I recall at least one instance each within the past few years of wanting to try the Szechuan, Mambo, and Sweet & Spicy Jam sauces—and going to McDonald’s and ordering Chicken McNuggets® for the sole purpose of trying those sauces—and not receiving the sauce.

The nuggets themselves were fine; the breading seemed a bit thicker than usual and tasted a bit too over-fried, but overall, it was still passable.

My first entrée was a Cheeseburger. I customized my Cheeseburger to also have shredded lettuce in addition to the standard ingredients.

Lately, I’ve been minimizing my consumption of red meats and other foods high saturated fat to maintain good heart health. Because of this, I decided to get a small burger, as opposed to the Quarter Pounder® with Cheese like I used to always get when I was younger.

Having not had a McDonald’s burger for a long time, having this Cheeseburger was nostalgic. It tasted about the same as I remember, and the extra let­tuce added a very small but noticeable dash of extra freshness to the flavor profile.

As my side for all three main courses, I got a medium-sized portion of World Famous Fries®. The ones I got were a bit more flaccid than they usu­ally are, but they still had the distinct, iconic McDonald’s Fries taste. As dipping sauce, I got some Honey Mustard.

For my beverage, I got a Mango Pineapple Smoothie.

I usu­ally don’t get sugary drinks and generally opt for a Diet Coke, but for this meal, I decided to get something special. I think the smoothie should’ve had a bit more blended ice because the consistency was a bit too close to juice, and it was overall too sweet for my preference, but flavor-wise, I liked it.

For my second entrée, I got a Filet-O-Fish® with shredded lettuce.

A lot of people don’t expect this, but the Filet-O-Fish® is actually my favorite sandwich at McDonald’s. I like fish in general, but for some reason, there is just something about the Filet-O-Fish® that I really like when it comes to the balance of flavors. I ordered it with shredded lettuce this time, but it usu­ally doesn’t come with any lettuce; I think it tastes great both with and without the modification.

My third and final entrée was the Deluxe Spicy McCrispy™.

I think McDonald’s chicken sandwiches are generally a hit-or-miss. I think it is very easy to overcook the chicken, and I’ve found the doneness of the chicken in McDonald’s sandwiches to be fairly inconsistent. I think this is compounded by the fact that the shape and thickness of the chicken is also fair­ly inconsistent, so it’s pretty difficult to universalize a cooking methodology across the franchise.

To make things even worse for McDonald’s, a lot of fast food restaurants have come out with some incredible, juicy chicken sandwiches with very unique flavors after the chicken sandwich wars that started in 2019. I eat a lot of chicken sandwiches, and comparatively, I find McDonald’s to be mediocre.

Before dessert, I used the provided napkins to clean my hands.

I like McDonald’s napkins for two main reasons. First, the fold makes it easy to use the inside to wipe your mouth and feel like you’re using a “cleaner” part of the napkin that hasn’t been exposed to its surroundings. Second, the brown color makes grease show up very obviously, so as you wipe down your fingers, you get the satisfaction of seeing how much progress you’re making.

For dessert, I got a McCafé® Baked Apple Pie.

I used to eat a lot of these when I was a kid. Every time my parents and I went to McDonald’s, they would always add in an apple pie as dessert. For some reason, I stopped having these as an adult, but I was looking forward to trying this again for the nostalgia.

Unfortunately, this apple pie didn’t quite meet the quality bar I was hoping for. The outside was overbaked and too crispy. The caramelized apple filling inside was dehydrated. The crust was too firm. Instead of tasting like a sweet apple pie, it just tasted sweet, with the apple being an afterthought. Overall, this was pretty disappointing, though I imagine there is a possibility that this particular pie was prepared erroneously and I just got unlucky.

And finally, for my second dessert and my sixth and last course of the meal, I got an OREO® Shamrock McFlurry®.

This tasted a little bit like unmixed mint chocolate chip ice cream, but with a distinctly more artificial flavor. It was also extremely sweet. This is prob­a­bly fine for someone who actually likes the taste of the Shamrock syrup, but personally, I recommend just getting a Vanilla Soft Serve Cone for a much cleaner and classic flavor.

The table on the right shows how much I paid.

I used a promotion on the McDonald’s mobile app to get a 20% discount on my entire order. That deal often doesn’t give the most value on smaller orders and I usually end up using a dif­fer­ent one, but considering the large size of my six-course meal this time around, it ac­tu­al­ly took a good chunk off my total.

You may find that the prices I paid at this McDonald’s are higher than what you’d find at your local McDonald’s. Keep in mind that costs are localized, and because I dined at a South­ern California location, I probably paid some of the highest prices in the United States for my meal. Even when eating at McDonald’s in my home city of Las Vegas, it ends up being sub­stan­tial­ly cheaper.

Even though my experience with this McDonald’s wasn’t the best for all the dishes, the sta­ples that I usu­ally order—the Filet-O-Fish® and World Famous Fries®—were good. I ac­tu­al­ly like McDonald’s, not only for my preferred menu items, but because of the fa­mil­iar­i­ty and feeling of “home” that seeing the Golden Arches gives, no matter how far away from your ac­tu­al home you are.

Also, happy April Fool’s Day.