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 complimentary 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.

Do not go to Anaheim White House.

For my second dinner in the San Francisco Bay Area post-Open Sauce (the convention blog post for which is still in progress and will be published soon), my friend and I decided to go Izakaya Rintaro in San Francisco, California. Japanese is my favorite cuisine, and she had recommendations from a friend who already had a positive experience at Rintaro, so we figured this would be a good spot to check out.

For our first cold dish appetizer, we got Ika no Nuta with Monterey Bay squid, Hikari Farm Tokyo turnip, komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach), Fuji ap­ple, and scallion with mustardy-sweet white miso.

Overall, this was a good dish taste-wise, but I couldn’t really tell that it was a squid dish, as the intensity of the squid flavor was very low relative to the tang of the sauce. This served as a great opening salad, but I didn’t think it was worth it at its price point with the squid, as the squid didn’t add much to the profile.

Our second cold dish, which wasn’t actually entirely cold, was Gindara no Sunomono with miso-cured Ft. Bragg black cod and Hikari Farm cucumbers, dressed in sweet vinegar and with a side of Half Moon Bay wasabi.

This was a nice, clean, straightforward cod dish. The ratio of cucumber to cod was a little high, but that was fine—we portioned the cucumber ac­cord­ing­ly to each bite of cod, then finished the remaining cucumber on its own as a salad. The fish was very tender, and the skin was cooked to the per­fect done­ness such that it maintained the skin-like texture but wasn’t too difficult to cut and chew.

For our drinks, we ordered off the non-alcoholic beverage menu—my friend got a Rintaro yuzu cooler with Kochi yuzu juice and seltzer, and I got a Rintaro ginger cooler with fresh ginger-lemon juice and seltzer. The yuzu cooler was sweet and had a nice yuzu flavor as you’d expect, and my ginger cooler had a rich gingery citrusy flavor with a great mixture of pungency and zestiness.

For our sashimi dish, we ordered San Ten Mori. On the sashimi plate, we received five slices each of San Diego bigeye tuna, konbu-cured San Francisco halibut, and Baja yellowtail amberjack.

The fish quality was great, but the thickness and size of the cuts were quite a bit smaller than I expected. I was also slightly disappointed at the fact that, although we got some Half Moon Bay wasabi, we didn’t get any ginger to act as a palate cleanser between the different kinds of fish.

The slices of halibut were placed on top of a slice of seaweed, but only the bottom-most cut actually touched the seaweed directly. I was the one who ended up eating that final slice, and this physical contact made for an interesting phenomenon where the flavor of the seaweed got absorbed by the halibut, thus making that last bite taste extremely rich, umami, and unique. To be clear, I don’t actually prefer that seaweed-infused halibut over clean halibut, but I definitely appreciated being able to try it at least once.

With the cold dishes done, it was time for chicken skewers. We ordered three portions of charcoal-grilled yakitori, with each portion constituting two skewers—momo (thigh) sansho, sori (oyster), and kawa (skin).

The thigh and oyster was some of the most tender chicken I’ve ever tasted. I’m not the biggest chicken skin fan, because I think it just tastes a little bit too intensely gamey of chicken, but this kawa yakitori wasn’t bad and was fairly well-balanced in flavor.

We didn’t want to be too healthy, so we threw in a fried dish to our set. We opted for Sakana Furai, consisting of minced yellowtail amberjack and white miso with fresh acme panko, snowy cabbage, and Rintaro tartar sauce.

In my opinion, this was the least memorable dish, as it basically just tasted like a fish cake. However, unexpectedly, the snowy cabbage stood out above everything else. With whatever sauce was already on it, it was joyfully delicious.

For our final main course, we ordered Kama Tama Udon. This had Rintaro hand-rolled udon “carbonara” with a raw egg yolk, butter, ginger, scallion, and freshly-shaved katsuobushi (bonito flakes).

We tossed all the sides in and gave it a good mix. The bonito flakes, made from skipjack tuna, gave the udon a rich fishy flavor, which I liked. It was also pretty salty, and even though I’m not usually a fan of excessively salty foods, the udon’s flavor had so much depth to it that the saltiness worked well in extracting and enhancing it.

Satisfied with the dishes so far, it was now time for dessert. First was Hojicha Panna Cotta, consisting of Japanese toasted green tea panna cotta with a side of hojicha syrup and almond cookies.

I’ve had panna cotta before, but none that had this kind of flavor profile. The Japanese toasted green tea gave it an extremely unique taste that was unbelievably rich and umami. It was almost like it was triggering the bitter taste receptors on my tongue to fire, but not all the way, so it seemed like it was bitter but it didn’t have any of the negative sensation usually associated with bitterness.

The presentation was also charming. The hojicha syrup came in a fun miniature cup, and it added an element of smooth sweetness without being too intense.

I think this is one of my all-time favorite desserts. I was already fairly satiated from dinner, but even then, I still literally could’ve had three or four more cups of this just because of how good it was.

Our second dessert was Sufurei Chiizu Keiki, which, as you might have guessed from the name, was Japanese soufflé cheesecake with Montmorency and Bing cherry compote.

I’m usually not the biggest fan of cheesecake, but I got this anyway for two main reasons: (1) it was marked on the menu as a limited-edition item, and (2) my friend wanted to hear me pronounce “sufurei chiizu keiki” when I ordered it. I wouldn’t say I have a strong fear of missing out, but I do still like getting limited-edition dishes because they are often experimental and I like trying unique and innovative foods.

This cheesecake did not taste like a normal cheesecake. Apparently Japanese cheesecakes are much lighter, and in my opinion, that made it significantly better. This tasted more like a fluffy pastry as opposed to a thick, blocky chunk of grease like cheesecake usually does. On top of that, the cherries bal­anced the flavor profile even more because I made sure to include some with every bite.

The restaurant was also aesthetically pleasing. I took photos of the entrance, dining area, and kitchen.

I thought this restaurant was fantastic, and it exceeded my expectations in basically every facet.

The food tasted excellent. It was obvious that all the ingredients were of high quality. All the flavors were clean, simple, and straightforward. There was no reliance on excessive amounts of salt or sugar, and the ac­tu­al contents of each dish spoke for themselves.

The order in which each item came out was also optimal for the flow of the meal (though I guess a lot of this had to do with us and the way we ordered); there were no jarring changes of flavor profile between dish­es, and everything told an overall nice flavor story.

In a similar vein, the variety of dish­es available on the menu was fairly vast. I feel like there was something available for someone with any kind of food preference (provided that you don’t hate Japanese cuisine en­tire­ly… but even then, I still think you’d be able to find something you enjoy). This let us build an entire jour­ney with our build-your-own eight-course meal.

The service was appropriately satisfactory, which is to say, also excellent. Our server was always there when we needed her and never around when we didn’t need her, which indicates that she was good at keeping an eye on us and knowing when to show up at our table. We ordered little by little based on our level of full­ness at the time, and when we were almost ready to order our next batch of items, our waitress showed up so there would be a minimal break between our items.

The ambiance was very comfortable and soothing. It was clear that they went for a cozy and casual feel, which made dining feel stress-free. It was as if we were allowed to just be ourselves, without any external pres­sure to act in a certain way. It was clear that diners wanted to reciprocate this level of respect for the cli­en­tele, so the entire vibe of the restaurant was one of peace and consideration for others.

If you’re in the San Francisco area and are willing to take a trip to the northern Mission District, and if these price points are within your budget, I highly recommend checking out Rintaro.