After a long string of back-to-back travel, I’m finally back home in Las Vegas to rest up for a bit before my next trip. After settling in for a few days and getting some errands done, I decided to go check out the Neon Museum in downtown.
The Neon Museum is a fairly popular tourist hotspot, so it was about time for me to go visit it after having been a resident of the Las Vegas Valley for the past six years (though I guess two of those years don’t count because I was road-tripping cross-country full-time). I scheduled my tour for the nighttime because I wanted to see the signs illuminated. This also meant I didn’t have to face the brunt of the excruciatingly hot summer temperatures, as it had (marginally) cooled down post-sunset.
It’s become a well-known meme at this point among my peers and fans as to how much I love Las Vegas, and with that adoration, I’ve done a lot of research about the city and the surrounding unincorporated towns. During that process, I’ve learned about the history of Las Vegas and the way it evolved to what it’s like today. Because of that, walking through the Neon Museum and recognizing the names on some of the old neon signs was a fun experience.
I got a discounted locals’ general admission ticket for US$23.00 and purchased a guided tour add-on for US$15.00. Along with the US$1.34 transaction fee, my total for the visit came to US$39.34. I do think that is a little bit pricey compared to other museums, but I’ve traveled a lot and been to a lot of museums, and I can say that I’ve never quite seen anything like the Neon Museum before when it comes to the nature of the exhibits and the historical significance of all the displays.
Here are some of my favorite shots from my walk through the Neon Boneyard.
While still in California for a string of travel and before heading back home to Las Vegas, I met up with one of my friends and her parents to try the chef’s tasting menu dinner at YakiYa in Pasadena of Los Angeles County, California.
When we arrived, we were given warm hand towels and yuzu refreshers to prepare us for our meal.
Our appetizer was raw ground A5 Miyazaki wagyu with ponzu jelly, truffle, and arimo sancho pepper.
The wagyu had a surprisingly mild flavor and was a bit gelatinous. I didn’t spend any extra time to carefully inspect it before eating it, but I’m guessing that it was intentionally made to be lighter. It was overall pretty refreshing.
Here is a random photograph of our golden utensils.
Next was USDA Prime ribeye tataki with ponzu, garlic, and Kaiware. This was served raw like carpaccio. I thought it would have probably been better with a light sear on the outside, but it wasn’t bad as served either.
My friend and I got two non-alcoholic beverages. Mine was the Soft Pagoda with yuzu, honey, lime, and a yuzu gummy; my friend’s was the Cherry Blossom with Amareno cherry, grenadine, and lemon. The Soft Pagoda tasted almost exactly like the yuzu refreshers we got at the beginning of the meal; the Cherry Blossom tasted like a citrusy sweet cherry juice.
Our next appetizer was bluefin tuna and hamachi with Kaluga caviar, scallion oil, and wasabi. The fish had very low fat content so it was fairly firm, but it was still very clean and fresh. The caviar was as expected, and the scallion oil added an interesting uniqueness to the sashimi.
From here, I started questioning the ordering of the dishes, because our next dish was chawanmushi with Dungeness crab, ikura, and shiitake mushroom. I feel like this could’ve been better served between some of the meat dishes or later on in the meal, but it still had good flavor and wasn’t bad early on in the menu. The texture was a bit strange, though—it started out with the slightly firmer and custardy texture you’d expect from chawanmushi, but it was way too watery once I got to the bottom.
Next was local farmer’s market crudité with multigrain rice cracker and red miso. This, again, felt like it would’ve been better elsewhere in the meal—namely, near the beginning. The rice cracker was good, the vegetables were clean and refreshing, and the red miso added a nice richness to the veggies.
At this point, we were confused if we would ever actually use the grill in front of us, because the waitress brought out wagyu meatballs and radish in oxtail broth. Again, it tasted great, but this would’ve been better in between meat dishes as somewhat of a palate cleanser to change up the texture sequence of the dishes, as opposed to just having back-to-back non-grill dishes right at the beginning.
It was finally time for the grill… and unfortunately, this is where things sort of started going downhill. First up was American wagyu beef tongue with scallion kosho. Tongue is my favorite cut of beef, so I was looking forward to this one.
Unfortunately, we found out that it wasn’t actually a real chef who was cooking our wagyu for us, but instead, just our waitress. A big part of good wagyu is making sure it is cooked properly, and just by looking at the way our waitress even picked up the tongs, it showed that she was neither experienced nor confident.
The tongue came out overcooked.
Our next batch of meat was USDA Prime ribeye, USDA Prime outside skirt, and A5 Miyazaki chuck with a side of wasabi sauce.
By the time the waitress thought she was done grilling this and moved it onto our plates, it was still very undercooked. I’m someone who likes meat rare, and it was still raw to my standards. After I took a bite into it, I put it straight back onto the grill.
Our palate cleanser between plates was heirloom tomato, shishito pepper, and truffle mushroom.
Our next batch of meat was American wagyu short rib and USDA Prime filet mignon chateaubriand.
The filet mignon was served with bone marrow, garlic miso, kimchi, and nori.
Our final meat dish was A5 Miyazaki wagyu strip loin with poached egg and a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt.
The waitress once again improperly cooked the meat—not only did she take it off the grill too quickly, but she immediately placed it in cold raw egg (which was not poached enough), and that killed all the heat momentum on the meat and left it as-is. This left the consistency of the meat too stringy and the egg too watery.
Our first dessert was lemon sorbet with basil oil.
This was my favorite dish of the meal. The basil oil added a very special and one-of-a-kind twist to the lemon sorbet. I had never tried this combination before, and this was a fun introduction to a new flavor profile.
Our second dessert and final dish of the dinner was matcha balls.
Here are some photos of the interior of the restaurant…
… and one of the front entrance.
Chef’s Tasting Menu ×4
$ 512.00
Soft Pagoda
$ 13.00
Cherry Blossom
$ 13.00
S.Pellegrino sparkling water
$ 8.00
S.Pellegrino still water
$ 8.00
Gratuity
$ 90.00
Sales tax
$ 56.79
Total
$ 700.79
The table on the right shows how much we paid.
I mentioned this a handful of times throughout this blog post, but I cannot emphasize this enough—the ability to cook wagyu properly is just as important as the quality of the wagyu. You can have a wagyu steak worth hundreds of dollars, but it’s not going to reach anywhere near its peak potential if you don’t prepare it well.
Wagyu also needs a lot of salt to bring out the rich flavor. Yakiniku restaurants will always give you a side of salt—either a salt-and-pepper mixture or some flaky salt—to dip your wagyu in to enhance the taste. YakiYa did not give us a side of salt… or a side of any seasonings or sauces, for that matter.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed by YakiYa. I feel like they took the chef’s tasting menu concept and tried to mass-produce it to be able to serve a lot of people at once. Chef’s tasting menus and omakase experiences are usually done in an intimate setting bar-side next to the chef and are usually capped at about eight people per round so each diner can get an appropriate amount of attention from the chef. YakiYa had a chef build the menu, but then delegated the rest to regular staff members who are unable to properly execute on the chef’s instructions.
The portion size of everything also seemed underwhelming. For some of the shared dishes that came combined in the same bowl or plate, it made me wonder whether we ended up with less food, e.g., rather than each person getting 1 portion, it might have gotten scaled down to 0.8 each as more portions were being added. I ended the dinner pretty hungry and drank a Soylent meal replacement shake right after to get some more calories.
Considering this is in Los Angeles, US$128.00 per person isn’t too bad, but I still wouldn’t consider it to be a top pick. For example, the omakase at Masamitsu, a restaurant less than a ten-minute drive away from YakiYa and still out in the suburbs, was absolute top-tier for only $22 more per person—good enough to be one of my all-time favorite restaurants.
So, the final verdict? It was fine, but there are better alternatives for the price. If you do still end up going to YakiYa anyway, just keep in mind that, at least in the way that they structured it when I was there, this is not indicative of what you should actually expect at a real high-end chef’s tasting menu restaurant.
While I was in Anaheim a week and a half ago for VidCon 2024, I joined some friends at the Anaheim White House Italian steakhouse for dinner. The restaurant was decently close to the Convention Center near where we were staying, and it was marketed as a nice and high-end restaurant, so we figured it would be a good spot to check out while we were in town.
We were wrong.
We were seated outdoors on a microscopically small table cluttered with four people’s worth of eating utensils plus a rose vase and an aggressively orange light in the center. The table was barely large enough to accommodate two people, let alone four. The strange light made all my photos impossible to color balance.
Our napkins were laid out on the table in the shape of a suit jacket with a black paper bowtie on top. Our waiter came around and said “let me tuck you in,” swiftly grabbed the napkin, sent the paper bowtie flying airborne across the table, then plopped the napkin down nearly as-is on my lap without even unfolding it.
While we were browsing the menu, we received some complementary bread. Rather than giving us a bread basket, they instead gave each of us one single roll with enough butter for an entire loaf of bread. The roll honestly wasn’t that bad, but it was tiny, and considering that they didn’t actually give us the basket, I couldn’t help myself to seconds.
After a fairly long wait after ordering, our first appetizer came out—oven-roasted pork belly with maple balsamic and orange sauce. We were conveniently served three pieces for a table of four, so we split each piece into three-quarters, with the lucky fourth person having three one-quarter pieces.
The fatty part of the pork belly tasted as you’d expect from pork belly, but the meat was pretty dry. Overall, it was pretty underwhelming. At US$15.50, it was nowhere near worth the price.
Our second appetizer was White House salad with iceberg lettuce, mixed greens, carrots, and cherry tomatoes tossed in the house signature passion fruit and ginger vinaigrette.
I didn’t have more than a few bites of this, but it was clear that this was nothing more special than a regular salad. Unfortunately, it was US$12.50. You’re literally better off just going to the grocery store, picking a premium pre-made bagged salad, and buying a small bottle of dressing—at that price point, you’d probably get three pounds of better-tasting salad.
After another long wait, our entrées came out. One of my friends got a 22-ounce Angus Midwestern T-bone steak rubbed with Hawaiian sea salt and refined demi-glace. Comically, their menu called it “demi glaze.”
The portion size of this was too big for him, so I finished his leftovers. It wasn’t bad, but it was pretty unremarkable. His dish was US$59.50.
The best part about his dish, though, was the side he added on—Belgium white chocolate mashed potatoes for US$14.00. That tasted exactly how you’d expect—it was like taking a bite of mashed potato, taking a sip of melted white chocolate, and gargling it together in your mouth. The flavors did not complement each other at all whatsoever. It was absolutely horrid.
Dinner companion #2 got Midwest beef braised in Cabernet Sauvignon reduction, served with horseradish cream over yellow polenta, for US$41.00. I did not try any of this dish.
And finally, dinner companion #3 got a 10-ounce hanger steak in a chimichurri marinade of parsley, garlic, cilantro, cumin, and red chili flakes for US$44.50. I tried one piece of this, and the restaurant somehow successfully managed to overcook and undercook it at the same time.
For my meal, I ordered two small plates. When I told the waiter I was planning on doing that instead of ordering a regular full entrée, he glanced over at me through the corner of his eye as if I had just landed from Mars.
My first plate was braised frog legs a la Provencal with tomato, roasted garlic, extra virgin olive oil, and white wine over pasta, for US$18.95.
This was way overseasoned so the flavor of the frog legs was basically completely absent. It was also overwhelmingly salty, yet somehow bland at the same time—the salt had no actual base flavors to enhance, so it ended up sort of just being bitter. The pasta was slippery and watery, so it could not retain any of the sauce.
My second small plate was Louis Laulhère Bourgogne escargot with garlic, Pernod liqueur, and herbs for US$16.50.
This had the same problem as the frog legs—the garnish was way too strong, the entire dish was way too salty, and it felt like I was pickling the inside of my mouth while I was eating.
We shared two desserts as a table. The first was a banana tart made with layers of baked puffed pastry, Chantilly whipped cream, chocolate ganache, and caramelized bananas, served with crème anglaise and vanilla ice cream, for US$14.95.
For some reason, the waiter decided that this was the moment that they would take away that repulsive orange lamp. Take it away during our meal when we had so little real estate left on our table that plates were literally on the verge of falling off? Of course not. Take it away after we have one single dessert plate in the center of the table? Yes, no better time.
Anyway, this was the one and only dish of our entire meal that I thought was decent. With that being said, as you can see, ours apparently suffered a mild earthquake on the way to our table, as it was tipping over and about to slide off the plate. This lack of proper presentation seemed to be exclusive to our tart, though—I saw a different party order one too, and theirs completed the journey to their table remaining upright.
Our second dessert was a flourless Grand Mariner soufflé with chocolate ganache, crème anglaise, and Chantilly cream for US$17.95.
This literally tasted like sweetened scrambled eggs.
The interior of the restaurant had fairly over-the-top regal decor, which I guess was nice. Too bad we didn’t get to enjoy it during our meal, because we were seated outdoors on artificial turf instead.
One random quirk about this restaurant was that there were advertisements everywhere trying to convince you to donate to some cause. It was marketed so aggressively that my brain literally mentally filtered it out as spam, so I don’t even remember what it was for. There were donation collection stations near the entrance of the restaurant where you could swipe your card and it would automatically charge you your preferred denomination. I’ve never seen anything like it at a restaurant before.
After finishing our meal, we went outside and my friend gave his valet ticket to the attendant. The restaurant has a decently-sized parking lot to the west of the building, but they chose to block that off and make it valet-only for US$7.00. To earn the valet fee, the attendant made the treacherous trek of ten steps to my friend’s car and drove it the gruesome few seconds it needed to be moved so we could get in without having to make the epic voyage ourselves.
They didn’t even charge his car for him while we were eating. You know, just to make sure that his Tesla charger at home wouldn’t get upset that the car was cheating on it.
My friend tried to pay the parking fee with a credit card, but apparently they accept cash only at the valet stand. The attendant had to take my friend’s card and spend a few minutes going into the restaurant to run a charge on the card using the terminal, then brought out a full-blown check pad with a pen, along with a merchant and customer copy of a receipt for him to sign.
Oh, and they parked his car in a handicap spot. Just so the valet can make sure they’re not overworking themselves by having to walk too far, I guess.
The second half of last week, I attended VidCon Anaheim.
This may come as a surprise because I’m fairly open and outspoken about how much I hate the stereotypical influencer or content creator kind of person, so it would seem strange to intentionally thrust myself into a convention full of them, but there were three fairly compelling reasons to go.
The first was because I’ve been getting pretty bored over the past year with a non-nomadic lifestyle, especially compared to road tripping and living out of hotel rooms full-time for two years during 2021-2023. I missed being in a new place every few weeks, so I decided to pick back up traveling and seize opportunities if such travel corresponds with an event.
The second reason, and the more important one, was that my friend Aidan, who runs the Skip the Tutorial channel on YouTube, was supposed to be holding his very first meet-and-greet and panel at VidCon. It ended up not actually being his first panel because he received an impromptu short-notice invitation to Open Sauce to host a Minecraft panel there shortly before VidCon, but at the time that I booked my travel, Aidan’s firsts were anticipated to take place at VidCon.
And finally, the third and least influential reason was because I already knew I wouldn’t like VidCon, but I didn’t want to have a negative impression of it without ever trying it out, so this was a chance for me to see VidCon for myself to either confirm or deny my suspicions.
Unshockingly, I was indeed able to confirm that I do not like VidCon.
Let’s start with a mild point first. VidCon was boring.
I felt like there wasn’t really much to do. TwitchCon has a similar problem where, if you’re not there to meet your favorite Twitch streamers, the only other thing left to do is to be a victim of all the exhibition booths that are, to be frank, just massive advertisements hoping to expose you to their brand and leave an impression in your memory so you remember them the next time you have to buy a keyboard or extend your car’s warranty.
VidCon obviously had an exhibitor’s hall, but it seemed incredibly empty and underwhelming. Conventions like PAX pack the halls so the aisles are only the width of about two people laying down head-to-toe, but VidCon’s aisles between booths were gaping chasms. It almost seemed like they couldn’t find enough exhibitors who wanted to buy space in the hall, so they stretched out the aisles to be gigantic so it looked like they were still filling the hall.
The booths that were there weren’t very engaging. There was a really nice Minecraft booth, but there wasn’t actually anything to do in there except for look at the decorations and take pictures. There were some branded rooms on the second floor of the convention center, but those were also just wide-open and empty rooms that were only used for networking purposes and not for actual interactive experiences.
Now onto one that is a bit more serious. I have never felt more objectified in my entire life than during the collective handful of hours I spent at VidCon.
For a bit of context, I have been a public figure for over a decade now and am no stranger to being recognized, both at conventions as well as randomly throughout my day-to-day life. I used to be a vlogger and live streamer, I’ve hosted many events and casted many tournaments, and I’m often a guest on a bunch of my friends’ shows. This means I have people recognizing me for different reasons and I end up meeting quite a variety of different people, which is nice.
Lately, I have been making very frequent appearances on my friend Doug Wreden’s Twitch live streams and YouTube videos. He is by far my most popular friend with the biggest fanbase whose content I regularly appear on, so naturally, an increasing ratio of people recognizing me have been from discovering me through Doug, relative to other mediums.
The problem with this is that Doug’s content is very different than what I usually do. I’ve historically done very “normal” appearances often revolving around commentary or discussing professional topics with a focus on self-improvement and the practical application of lifestyle adjustments to achieve personal goals. Doug’s content, on the other hand, throws me in as a target to fairly crude and primitive humor.
In a vacuum, I don’t mind; in fact, one of the more fun facets of being an actor or public figure is being able to participate in a broad scope of scenarios like that. However, it becomes extremely annoying when those artificial or manufactured situations are not contained in those contexts and instead end up bleeding out into my real life.
For example, one of the comedic segments on Doug’s live streams and videos ended up being calling me things that I’m not, such as a barred attorney or sworn peace officer. Within the context of his content, it’s supposed to be a show, so that is fine; however, without the proper context, this ultimately just ends up being the same as spreading blatant misinformation. Another segment revolves around obsessing over the fact that I own a firearm, which is fine as part of his content, but the obsession is very unusual out-of-context, especially considering I live in the United States and it is a very normal thing to own firearms here.
Back to VidCon. I guess it is reasonable that people would recognize me through Doug’s videos there, considering that it is basically an unofficial YouTube convention and Doug’s YouTube channel has over two and a half million subscribers as of today… but never before have I had such a crushing ratio of people recognizing me from Doug’s content. Out of the few dozen people who recognized and interacted with me, all but two were because of Doug.
People who know me for other reasons usually have something interesting to talk about, but apparently Doug’s fans don’t have much to discuss, so they just parrot Doug’s jokes at me. I feel like I only had three good conversations with fans. Everyone else just awkwardly yelled things at me, primarily revolving around calling me things that I’m not. Never before have I felt like less of a human and more like I had just been reduced to nothing beyond a tool for their entertainment. This happened so relentlessly that, at this point, I never want to hear the words “lawyer,” “cop,” or “gun” ever again.
Was this unique to VidCon? I don’t know. It’s very possible that this just happens to be the tipping point of this being the norm for me moving forward. But what I can say for sure is that VidCon was the very first place where it was so shockingly and blatantly obvious to me that it was happening.
Time for a quick intermission. Here are some random photographs I took around the exhibition hall:
(Note: I am aware that some faces are blurred while others are not. Technically, as part of the terms and conditions of a purchase of a VidCon admission pass, attendees agreed to be filmed and photographed while on convention grounds, so I can leave my pictures as-is. With that being said, I still discretionarily chose to censor some faces of minors who had enough of their likeness captured to be recognizable. Please stop attempting to contact me about “forgetting about some faces.”)
As one of my final activities of VidCon, I watched Aidan’s panel.
I thought Aidan did a great job. Every time he spoke, he said something impactful and meaningful. The way he worded the information he wanted to relay was precise and succinct. The tone and cadence of his voice made him sound expressive and engaging, and he enunciated all his words clearly. He was also quick-witted and added on-topic humor to the panel where appropriate.
Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed about every other aspect of the panel. The other panelists rambled on about random things that sounded unrelated to the panel’s primary topic and were literally just spamming comms. I had never heard of any of them before, but apparently they were all successful YouTubers, so they clearly know what they’re doing, but it felt like they were at a point where they hadn’t yet quite reached a level of mastery of their craft to be able to articulate and teach how they did what they did.
There was an extremely strange and off-putting interaction during the post-panel Q&A segment where, not longer than 15 minutes after one of the panelists discussed the negative mental impact of hate comments, one of the audience members went up to the microphone and casually unironically insulted the hairstyle of one of the panelists. Aidan took over and skillfully diffused the situation by making light of the comment and diverting attention away from the insult and back to the Q&A, but if it wasn’t for him, that would’ve been a very awkward moment.
So, my final verdict? I did not like VidCon. I do not plan on ever attending again, and I do not recommend it for anyone else unless you are or have children who admire YouTubers.
But before I wrap up, I do want to share one positive thing.
My second-to-last fan interaction of VidCon was with a girl in a cosplay (whose name I did not catch) walking alone on the second floor near the panel stages. She recognized me and was in utter shock that, not only was I was a real human being, but I was standing in front of her.
She was speechless, but just from her body language, I could tell she was either drained of energy or otherwise having a rough time, and seeing me was a moment of bliss in her day. She didn’t say much apart from asking for a picture and telling me that I had made her day. It was very fulfilling to me and I felt very honored that I could seemingly bring so much joy to someone and brighten their mood just by existing.
I’m off on my next adventure after my week in the San Francisco Bay Area for Open Sauce, but I had some spare photos that didn’t fit in any of my previous topic-based blog posts, so I decided to do a final travel round-up.
But first, a story. I call this one… “How not to travel out of Burbank Airport.”
As is probably blatantly obvious by now, I travel a lot. Not only do I travel a lot in the conventional sense, but in case you’re new here and missed it, I used to travel literally full-time during 2021-2023 when I road tripped across the United States and Canada and lived out of hotel rooms for two years straight. Throughout my travels, I have become an expert and acquired some specialized knowledge.
Upon arriving at Hollywood Burbank Airport for my Alaska Airlines flight to San Francisco, I entered through Terminal B to get through security, as my plane was scheduled to board from the B gates. I noticed that the TSA line was unusually long, so I decided to walk to Terminal A to go through an alternative security checkpoint. I thought I had made a great choice, because upon my arrival, I noticed that the line in Terminal A was nearly non-existent. I entered through the TSA PreCheck® line and finished screening within two minutes.
After popping out the other end, I looked for the connector between Terminal A and Terminal B so I could get to my gate. I looked around and there was only one way forward, so I mindlessly started walking from Gate A1 deeper into the airport. I eventually made it to Gate A9, upon which I had a fateful encounter with a brick wall. Confused, I checked my GPS location on Google Maps and realized I had walked in the literal opposite direction, away from Terminal B. I turned around and walked all the way back to Gate A1.
But, remember how I said there was only one way forward after the security screening checkpoint? Once I made it back to Gate A1, I had that exact same problem. I needed to walk west. The only path forward was east, unless I wanted to leave the building and go outside. Confused, I explained my situation to a nearby officer, who let me know that there isn’t actually a gateside connector between Terminals A and B and that I would have to exit outdoors and go back through security in Terminal B.
By trying to outplay the system, I outplayed myself.
I went outside, walked back into Terminal B, and stood in line to go through Terminal B’s security checkpoint. I made my way to my gate with four minutes to spare before boarding doors closed.
Here are some photos of Los Angeles on the way out.
Burbank to San Francisco is a short flight so there was no meal service, but I did get some snacks. I felt the need to take a picture of this bag of chips because it only had about five chips inside it. (Insert disgruntled statement about shrinkflation here.)
Landing at San Francisco International Airport is always an interesting experience due to its location—SFO has runways extending into the San Francisco Bay. This creates an amusing visual where it looks like your plane is about to dive directly into the water, up until asphalt magically spawns under you and you touch down safely.
If you followed my adventures during my road trip, you probably know that I’m a Marriott loyalist and achieved Ambassador Elite status from my time living out of hotels full-time. Unfortunately, I had to cheat on Marriott and stayed at a Hilton during Open Sauce because I had a room inside the designated special guest hotel.
I don’t have any special status with Hilton, so I didn’t have lounge access for free food (if there was even a lounge at all). This meant that, on the day I flew in, I had to go searching for my own food. I didn’t have a rental vehicle so I decided to order on a delivery app. Conveniently, the restaurant did not include utensils with my tonkatsu donburi, so I had to pull off my hotel specialty: using two coffee stirrers as chopsticks.
I extended my stay in the San Francisco Bay Area after Open Sauce finished because I have a friend who lives in the area, and I figured it would be a good opportunity to spend time with her while I was already there. On the day after Open Sauce before I transferred from the special guest hotel to my own hotel, some friends and I stopped by ToToRo Ramen for lunch.
After ridesharing from San Mateo to downtown San Francisco, I checked into The Jay, an Autograph Collection hotel under Marriott. After the mediocre room and service from Hilton, stepping once again into a Marriott felt like coming back home.
On my way out, I decided to fly JSX from Oakland International Airport back to Hollywood Burbank Airport. I’ve generally had positive experiences with JSX from back when they were still known by their full name JetSuiteX, and because I was leaving from downtown San Francisco which was almost equidistant between SFO and OAK, I decided to go with OAK and fly JSX again (they only service OAK and not SFO).
That was a mistake. JSX’s quality of service has severely degraded to the point where I’d rather save the money and fly premium economy on a mass commercial airline from now on.
They used to have nice, luxurious lounges with food and drinks, but it seems like they got rid of all the food and only have a Starbucks dispensing machine. The only trace of food available was cat and dog treats next to the sink. I had not eaten at all this day, so I was literally banking on having food at this lounge, and I could not. Note that JSX flies out of a separate hangar, so it’s not like I could walk to an airport restaurant and get food either.
The interior of the jet I got seemed to have not really been taken care of that well. The jets also used to be a 1-2 all-business-class configuration, but for some reason, this jet was a 1-1 configuration… except instead of using the extra space from the missing row of seats as just extra space, they installed gigantic blocky armrests that make the entire cabin look cramped and unnavigable.
My rideshare vehicle from my hotel to JSX’s Oakland hangar was a Tesla Model Y that had an extremely jerky ride so I was already very motion sick, and I ended up flying on an empty stomach; this combined was a great recipe to get severe air sicknesses. I was on the verge of throwing up the entire time, and the fact that there is more turbulence on JSX flights due to the small size of the jet didn’t help.
Fortunately, I made it back to my friend’s house without vomiting, but I got really close.
And finally, to close this blog post, here is an out-of-context photograph of my friend Doug Wreden‘s blanket after I wrapped it in plastic food wrap.
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.
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.
