Tokyo Go Go Visited 9/10/2011 3.5 Forks

Tokyo Go Go 3174 16th St., (at Albion St), San Francisco, CA 94103

When I think of San Francisco, I think of Mission burritos and fresh seafood which includes sushi.  So as part of my SF trek, I wanted to get in at least one sushi meal.  I'm not sure if Tokyo Go Go is well known in the SF food scene but my taxi driver knew it by name, which is impressive and always a good sign. 

I walk into Tokyo Go Go on a Saturday night and the place was definitely hopping.  It was definitely way more trendy than the typical sushi place I'm used to.  The place was loud, had a club feel and the clientele leaned more towards the hip crowd.  We didn't have a reservation and while they were able to seat us they told the group right behind us that they couldn't accommodate them because they didn't have a reservation. Weird, but at least we got "seated" - when I say seated, they put 3 of us at a tiny table that barely fit 2 people.  Poor Neera had to practically sit in the line of traffic.  


The menu is not your purist fish place, it's more of an "fusion" sushi place with rolls that have ingredients like asparagus, spinach, kobe beef, and soy mayo.  We ordered the seaweed salad, sashimi plate, spicy scallop roll, rainbow roll, and the golden gate roll.  The seaweed salad was fine and your typical green seaweed salad (although I will say I've had some bad seaweed salad before) with a sweet flavor.  The sashimi came out next and it had a  mix of 3 pieces each of your typical sashimi plate: salmon, tuna, yellowtail, and white fish.  The cuts were all a great size, not too big and not too small and they tasted very fresh and clean.  The rainbow roll  was delicious with fresh crab, avocado, cucumber and associated fish on top and the pieces were very generous in size.  Along with the rainbow roll, came the Golden Gate roll which came with tempura asparagus, avocado, salmon, with a thin slice of lemon on top.  At first I was a little weary of the lemon on top, but you know what? It was actually pretty refreshing and really cleansed the palate.  I was a bit confused as to why all the rolls didn't come out at the same time and it turned out that the waitress heard "saba" (mackerel) and they brought out 2 pieces of mackerel sushi instead.  I have no idea how she mixed up the two but it was pretty loud in there.  So we finished all food and just sat around for our spicy scallop roll to show up.  When it finally did show up, it was the kind of spicy scallop roll that I like which is large fresh chunks of scallop instead of the chopped up mixed kind.  Instead of a spicy mayo it had jalapeno as the heat which was a nice touch.  Overall, the food was good and it felt like a hip "night" out.  But the reason for the deductions were: practically being seated in the aisle, the mix up of the order, and the wait for the last roll. Total bill: $110.      


Photo Credit: Yelp