Ozumo: Time to Explore Beyond Sushi

I've been to San Francisco's Ozumo dozens of times, but each and every time, I have only ordered sashimi and sushi. Out-of-town visitors always have a way of making you expand your choices, whether it's food or where you go in the city, and so we did.

We started off with Sake, Koshi no Kanbai Muku Junmai from Niigata prefecture, miso Soup, house made dashi, tofu, wakame and scallion and age-dashi dofu, which is lightly tempura silken tofu with bonito flakes and a light tentsuyu broth.

We then moved onto Yuhi-Tartar of Kobe beef, raw quail egg, wasabi sour cream and blanched spinach salad, Gindara-Miso marinated black cod, and Saya Endo-Snap peas with Kobe beef compound butter.

This was followed by Hitsuji-Colorado lamb chops with yuzu kosho glaze, Chu toro yama kake: medium fat tuna belly with grated mountain yam, Yamabuki-Sea urchin and Japanese mushroom risotto and Hatsu-Robata grilled chicken hearts.

And, we also tried some of their incredibly fresh sushi as well - Hotate-Hokkaido (scallop), Unagi (Freshwater eel), Toro-Kindai Bluefin tuna belly (the only sustainable Blue Fin tuna available), and Ikura (House cured Scottish salmon roe).

Everything was fresh and the service was outstanding. Half of us had iPads so the manager came by later to ask us questions and was eager to 'play.' I'm looking forward to returning to explore more of Ozumo's traditional dishes and of course another recommended bottle of Sake.