For my second omakase experience during this trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I went to Utzutzu on Park Street in Alameda, California.

After a bit of an underwhelming experience at Delage the night prior, I was hoping that Utzutzu would be different and meet or exceed my expectations.

After doing a bit of research, I noticed some information online that implied Delage and Utzutzu may be related in some way, but that information was a handful of years old. Considering how quickly restaurants can change (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic from the past few years), I think that the two spots may have split and underwent new management—Utzutzu had a completely different feel to it than Delage, and Utzutzu resembled a true, traditional Japanese omakase experience.

The entrance to Utzutzu is inconspicuous, and I wouldn’t have been able to find it if I didn’t keep an eye out for building numbers—it is up the stairs and around the corner above a consignment shop called Mommy’s Trading Post. The restaurant is fairly small, with a little waiting area near the entrance and a seven-seat bar for diners who can watch the chef prepare their meals while they enjoy their food.

 
The first course of the night was a pair of appetizers—kinpira gobo and black goma asparagus. Kinpira gobo is a traditional Japanese dish made from braised burdock root and carrots sprinkled with sesame seeds; the asparagus dish was cooked and seasoned with black sesame paste.

Both appetizers were great—they had the perfect amount of zest to get your taste buds going, but was still subtle enough that it allowed the deep, rich flavors of the vegetables to shine through.

The second dish was nanbanzuke. This one was made with Scottish sea trout that had been sitting for eight hours inside the vinaigrette with a medley of vegetables so it can fully absorb the flavors. The trout had maintained its structure throughout the soaking process and was firm on the outside, but fell a­part in my mouth and was extremely tender when I started chewing.

Similar to the appetizers, this dish also had a nice, sharp flavor to it that gently tingled my tongue, but it wasn’t uncomfortably sour. I noticed that this was a recurring theme throughout this particular omakase experience—this chef did an amazing job properly diluting sauces so that there was no single taste (sourness, salt­i­ness, sweetness, etc.) that overwhelmed the true, underlying flavor of the ingredients.

A big part of omakase is being able to have an interactive experience with your chef and watch your next course being prepared. Utzutzu’s layout made this very easy—each diner was within about two meters of the chef throughout the whole meal, only separated by a thin, clear cough guard at face level. The chef personally hand-delivered each piece of nigiri through an opening at the bottom of the panel.

The first sequence of nigiri had nine pieces, and all of them were great. The size of each cut of fish wasn’t generous, but it was still a very satisfying a­mount. The ratio of rice to fish was excellent, and it also seemed like the chef might have been actively changing the portion size of rice, depending on the intensity of the fish, in order to properly complement the flavor.

Along with our omakase experience from the chef, we also had the convenience of having a comedy show on the side. My friend and I took up two seats, and we had two other parties as our dining companions who had booked the same reservation slot: one group of three elderly friends, and one group of a young couple celebrating their anniversary.

I personally didn’t notice this because I was too focused on capturing photos, enjoying the food, and taking notes, but my friend told me that the elderly diners were subtly making fun of me for how I seemed to be taking everything so seriously. From that, plus their very casual attire, I imagine they weren’t the most familiar with fine dining (which, to be clear, I have no problem with; I think it’s heartwarming when the elderly go out to sophisticated experiences that they might not have been able to enjoy when they were younger). I did have a brief interaction with them near the end of the meal, which I’ll cover later, and they were all very pleasant people.

The actual funny part, though, was the younger couple. The man seemed to love sushi, but the woman notified the chef that she doesn’t eat snapper and mackerel because they taste too fishy (which, to be clear, snapper does not have a strong fishy taste, and in fact, it is often recommended for sushi be­gin­ners due to its milder flavor).

The solution here would have been to not go to omakase, considering that this completely defeats the purpose of omakase (which, translated from Ja­panese, means “I’ll leave it up to you”), but of course, the chef wanted to be respectful of her wishes and tried to accommodate. Not only did we have red snap­per, but we also had two types of mackerel—regular mackerel (Scombridae) and horse mackerel (Carangidae)—so he ended up substituting them with more basic options, like tuna and salmon roe. More on this later.

The final piece of nigiri in this half of the meal was this mysterious orange fish. Based on its taste, I am 99% sure it is salmon, but my friend insists the chef had called it some complicated name that she had never heard of before.

The following course was sumiso-ae with octopus and cucumber. Again, this had the same theme as the previous dishes prior to the chain of nigiri—the sauce was tangy and noticeable, but was still smooth and complementary enough to the rest of the ingredients that it felt like I was eating well-seasoned raw octopus (as opposed to just a sour salad).

Next was chawanmushi, or Japanese steamed egg custard. The inside contained mushrooms and a gingko nut, and the outside was topped with a piece of sea urchin. Contrary to what you’d expect from custard, this Japanese steamed variant was not sweet at all. Instead, this entire dish was a constant flow of different kinds of umami coming from all four main ingredients.

The quality of the uni was also fantastic—it had a strong and prominent uni flavor that wasn’t diluted or faded, and it had the amazing, soft, buttery tex­ture that you expect when rolling it around on your tongue and then pressing it up against the roof of your mouth.

After the brief intermission, we returned to nigiri for a second round. This next batch was a bit more untraditional; the nigiri from the first half covered different kinds fish that you’d probably expect from a sushi restaurant, while the second half allowed the chef to mix in a few more creative pieces.

One of the pieces I particularly liked was the scallop. Usually, I’ve seen scallop sushi served as nigiri in a more circular shape (considering that is the o­rig­i­nal shape of the scallop), or diced and placed on top of rice inside a circular gunkan maki roll wrapped by seaweed. Instead, this chef cut the scallop in half hor­i­zon­tally about 80% of the way through, allowing it to open up and rest on top of the pillow of sushi rice like a little tent.

He seared the top of the scallop with a flame, giving it an ever-so-tiny tinge of charred bitterness. However, it was so subtle that it didn’t actually fully register in my mouth as bitterness, and simply enhanced the cooked taste of the scallop with a new flavor dimension.

This second round of nigiri was the chef’s opportunity to have us try some non-fish options as well. As you can see from above, one of the pieces was o­kra with bonito flakes. He also served us some wagyu beef.

He crafted the pieces of wagyu in front of us directly out of a cut of steak, and we were able to see the stunning marbling, iconic of high-grade wagyu. Af­ter preparing a piece for each person, he lined them up and seared the outside with the same flame he had just used for the scallops a few moments pri­or. This added a perfect sear to the outside and rendered just enough fat that it brought the beef to the melt-in-your-mouth status you expect from wagyu.

Garnished lightly with some subtle sauce and topped with a few circular cuts of scallion, the wagyu nigiri was a pleasant flavorful change-up from the fish and seafood that made up a majority of the line-up.

People say that one of the best ways to determine the skill of a sushi chef is to try their tamago, or Japanese rolled omelet. I believe the rationale behind this is that cooking a basic egg dish like this tests whether the chef has strong fundamentals and a solid foundation upon which they can base the rest of their cooking (as opposed to having to rely solely on gimmicks). I’ve heard similar things said by Western chefs with regards to scrambled eggs.

Without exaggeration, this was the best tamago I have ever had. It ascended to a level where I’m not really even sure how to describe it. It tasted like amazing tamago, but with some extra magic sprinkled in on top of that.

After the chef finished serving us six pieces as part of the second round of nigiri, he asked us whether we had any special requests. By the way that it was communicated to us, I was under the im­pression that this special request would be the final item of the second chain of nigiri. My friend and I both like sea urchin, so we requested for the chef to craft something for us made from sea urchin.

The chef made each of us a special piece of uni gunkan maki loaded with sea urchin and carefully held together with seaweed. The tension of the sea­weed was so perfect that, upon placing the maki in my mouth and biting down, the wrap burst and created a single, big popping sensation that made it feel as if I was eating a humongous piece of roe with uni inside. The uni was somehow even better than the uni in the chawanmushi from earlier, though that is most likely because I just really like uni and that was the singular dominating flavor of the gunkan maki.

After getting the bill later, I discovered that this was not in fact the final piece of the second round of nigiri, but rather, an add-on service for US$18.00 each. That wasn’t that huge of a deal, though; that is pretty pricey for one piece of sushi, but the quantity of sea urchin in each gunkan maki was sat­is­fy­ing, and the market price for sea urchin of that quality can climb pretty high. All things considered, it wasn’t an unreasonable price for the value we re­ceived.

But… remember the couple I mentioned earlier who had the anti-mackerel woman? Well, sometime during her meal, she changed her mind and decided that she wanted to try the mackerel nigiri. When it came up during the regular rotation, she had gotten a slice of standard akami tuna instead as a sub­stitution. Now that she had an opportunity to request something specific, she requested mackerel.

She didn’t spit it out or anything so I guess it was fine, but the hilarity here is that, if you think about it, she technically used a special re­quest for akami tuna, prob­a­bly one of the most simple, basic, and inexpensive sushi options (considering that the mackerel she just ate was the equivalent of the regular nigiri course, so the “extra” piece she got was tuna).

If my receipt said “sea urchin” or “uni,” it would be clear that the special requests are charged specific to what you order, but the receipt simply said “nigiri add-on,” which implies that it is just a flat fee for the add-on service. I almost felt bad for her for paying US$18 for a piece of tuna nigiri, but then I remembered that she came to omakase, the entire point of which is to allow the chef to tell you a story through food, and interfered with him… so in­stead, I took her clown show as a nice form of entertainment while I had my meal.

As the experience came to an end, we were served some akadashi. The waiter let us know that the soup was boiled with the heads and bones of all the fish that we had eaten to extract their flavor, as a way to try and minimize waste and get the most value out of as much of the fish as possible.

For dessert, we were served mango shiso sorbet. The friend who joined me for this dinner had celebrated a birthday the week prior, so we figured it wouldn’t hurt to mark on the reservation that we were there for a birthday, just in case they would do something special for her. We didn’t get any free cake or an occasion discount anything, but they did stick a candle in her sorbet and gave her a little sign that read “Happy Birthday.”

Our reservation companions—namely, one of the elderly men from the group of three—noticed the candle and began singing the Happy Birthday song to her, with everyone else joining in shortly afterwards. She blew out the candle and it made for a nice conclusion to the dinner.

Here is a breakdown of what we paid:

This obviously is not a small amount of money, especially considering the extra add-on service, and it was more expensive than the omakase at Delage, but I still think this was very worth it, and I’m very glad that I went.

Sometimes, great chefs will begin raising their omakase prices higher and higher, and after a few hundred dollars per person, the price sort of becomes arbitrary. In other words, you aren’t going to notice that huge of a quality difference between a $300-per-person meal and a $400-per-person meal, and at that point, the pricing is generally determined more by how much the restaurant can get away with charging while still keeping their reservation slots full.

With that being said, Utzutzu is not like that, and the pricing here is still within reach and reason for a lot of people. I highly recommend it if you are look­ing for a special experience to celebrate a special event or occasion. I also think it’s a great place to check out if you’re just in the area and are com­fort­a­ble splurging on a nice, high-end meal.

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a nice, high-end restaurant, so I was looking forward to visiting Delage in downtown Oakland, California, a Japanese res­tau­rant with an omakase offering (more commonly referred to in the United States as a “tasting menu” or “chef’s choice”). Tragically, my camera bat­ter­y ran out after the first shot, so I took all the photographs with my phone instead, which is why the quality isn’t quite up to my regular standard.

Upon arrival, we were led in through an unsuspecting door that did not at all look like a restaurant; we were only able to identify it by the building num­ber of the address, as well as from the four other people who had arrived ahead of us and were also in attendance for the omakase. The interior of the restaurant was fairly small; there was enough seating at the bar area for six diners, as well as a table in the corner that could accommodate four ad­di­tion­al people.

As the amouse-bouche (sometimes referred to as “the free hors d’œuvre”), we were given crystal bread and smoked salmon with wasabi cream, edible flowers, microgreens, and a bamboo charcoal tuile, served atop four large pebbles.

The smoked salmon had the distinct, iconic, recognizable flavor that you’d expect of smoked salmon. I thought the wasabi cream would add a nice zest, but there was no spice to it at all, and overall, the flavor profile felt a bit dull—not much different than just getting regular cured salmon, but with the added crispy texture of the crystal bread.

The first course was a sake tataki salad with seared wild king salmon, black garlic caviar, red onion pearls, and organic mixed greens, tossed in shiro goma dressing and topped with a take-sumi cracker. The salad was adorned with pickled red onion, microgreens, edible flowers, and more organic mixed greens.

This salad was pretty disappointing.

The king salmon slices were very thin, the condition of the fish looked almost scrap-like, and the mass of the fish was about the same as what you’d ex­pect from one single slice of salmon sashimi from a regular sushi restaurant. The salmon appeared to have been cut from the flesh and not the belly, so it lacked the deep, rich, fatty flavor that you expect from high-quality salmon.

The caviar was even more under­whelm­ing, as its flavor was nearly unrecognizable through the tang of the dressing. The mixed greens weren’t actually that bad with the dressing, and it served as a pretty good appetizer, but the portion size was so small that, by the time I realized I was enjoying the veg­gies, I had already finished them.

The second course was a two-piece set of sushi wrapped in bamboo leaf.

The one on the right was avocado and edible flower, which I am surprised they even considered to be worthy of being included in a pair of sushi se­lec­tions. The one on the left was unagi (freshwater eel), but it was deskinned and did not have the iconic eel sauce, so it did not actually taste much like eel.

It seemed like the bamboo-wrapped triangles were lightly steamed, but I’m not sure if that had much of an effect; I believe the bamboo was mostly there for presentation.

The third course was when the real sushi began—it was a chef’s selection of four pieces of nigiri sushi.

The first piece was tuna, which was fairly straightforward and tasted as expected. The second piece was white snapper, which had far too much soy sauce in the rice that overwhelmed the flavor of the fish. The third piece was barracuda, which I had never had before; it had a very distinct and strong fishy taste, which I actually liked. The fourth piece was bonito, which was also fairly as expected, but also had too much soy sauce.

I’m not a chef and don’t know much about flavor storytelling, so I might be mistaken here, but I think this set of nigiri might have flowed a bit better if the bonito was the second piece (which would bump the snapper and barracuda to third and fourth, respectively).

As a palate cleanser, we received a fermented beverage (I don’t remember what kind, and couldn’t tell from the taste), topped with foam and edible gold. I didn’t have a particularly strong opinion about this; it definitely wasn’t something I’m used to drinking, but it wasn’t bad. The gold flakes didn’t seem to accomplish much more than just sticking to my upper lip.

For the fourth course, we transitioned into a fried dish—wild Alaskan black cod katsu, topped with microgreen onions and chili strings, bathing in a miso white sauce with accents of shiso oil, chili oil, and katsu sauce.

This was a nice dish, and I understood why they decided to slot in a palette cleanser right before the katsu. It was slightly too fried for my personal pref­er­ence, but it was still within a reasonable range of crispiness on the outside. The cod on the inside was soft and juicy, and the sauce supplemented the flavor of the fish well.

I couldn’t really taste the oils and katsu sauce anointed in the miso, but at least they were nice to look at and added some extra col­or.

Next up was my favorite dish of the night. We got a mini chirashi combination, one that focused on roe and sea grapes, and another that had salmon roe and sea urchin.

The bowl with the smaller roe and sea grapes had a very satisfying texture to them, and it was very fun to bite down and have many small orbs pop in your mouth. The bowl with the sea urchin and its deep, umami flavor was well-complemented by the stronger flavor of the salmon roe.

For the sixth course, we had another plate of four pieces of nigiri—this time it was toro (tuna belly), red snapper, sea bream, and sea bass.

I think this might have been my first time trying sea bream… or, if it wasn’t, it probably wasn’t very memorable, because it did not have a very distinct flavor. Unfortunately, what made it even worse was that the sea bream (as well as just all the nigiri pieces served in general) had too much soy sauce, so it “salted out” a lot of the flavor of the fish.

The seventh course was hiyokomame miso espuma soup, made from chickpea miso and mushrooms, sprinkled with shichimi pepper and topped with rice cracker bits and microgreens.

For heart health reasons, I’ve been avoiding thick and creamy foods lately that are high in saturated fat, so this soup tasted extra thick and creamy to me, simply because I wasn’t used to the texture anymore. However, I still thought it was great—it had a deep, rich flavor, and the rice cracker bits added a re­freshing crunch and pop to each spoonful of soup.

For dessert, as the eighth course, we were served amazake pudding. Amazake is a non-alcoholic fermented Japanese rice drink, rich in enzymes and pro­bi­ot­ics. The pudding was made with dairy-free cream, had assorted fruit glazed with kuromitsu, and was adorned with a pomegranate tuile.

The lack of attention to detail on the tuile was a bit disappointing to me, considering that this was supposed to be a high-end Japanese restaurant. As you can tell from the photograph, there were “stringy” parts of the tuile that were not removed to form a clean butterfly shape. That obviously doesn’t make a difference in taste or functionality, but isn’t the best sign for omakase.

Otherwise, the pudding itself was good. It wasn’t anything crazy or innovative, but the flavor was clean, the fruit was fresh, and the tuile added a nice crunch to the texture.

One different thing about this restaurant is that diners were required to pre-pay for the omakase prior to being served. This was done by scanning a QR code and processing a credit card payment on their website. I imagine this policy was implemented after they had issues with non-payment post-meal.

It’s difficult to determine how much gratuity to give for the service prior to being served at all, but I didn’t bring any cash to be able to tip the servers af­ter the meal was over. Additionally, I didn’t want an absence of gratuity on the pre-payment to negatively affect our quality of food or service. Thus, I just selected the minimum percentage gratuity amount on the payment interface, without having to manually edit and type in a custom amount.

Here is a breakdown of what my friend and I paid:

Bookings were available to begin at 5:30 PM and 8:00 PM and lasted two hours each. We selected the 5:30 PM time slot because neither of us particularly enjoy being out too late. Street parking in Oakland is $2 per hour but free after 6:00 PM, so we only ended up having to pay for half an hour’s worth.

Overall, I thought that this omakase experience was pretty underwhelming. At this price point, you generally expect to have an in­credible time. It def­i­nite­ly wasn’t bad, and I would have been pretty happy if I had paid about half of what I did, but at US$125.00 per person before taxes, fees, and gra­tu­ity, I think it’s a bit too pricey relative to the value you get.

Another big element of the omakase experience is that you are able to see your food being prepared by the chef and get an opportunity to have an in­ter­ac­tive experience. That was only loosely present at this restaurant; the chef was assembling the nigiri at the bar area in front of me, but she gave off the im­pression of being more of a regular cook, as opposed to a prestigious chef.

I have another omakase reservation coming up shortly, and I’m hoping that it’s better than this one. If money is not a problem for you, then you may con­sid­er going to this one anyway, but if you’d like to maximize value per dollar, I’m guessing that there are likely some other options in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area that will offer a better experience.