Sushi Ino

[SG-]

Had dinner at Sushi Ino at Japantown yesterday and definitely one of the better experiences since I moved to the bay area recently. Here's what we had

Toro

Magurozuke

Hirame

Hamachi

Ankimo

Aji

Kazanuko

Hotate

Awabi

Grilled Seasoned Toro

Anago

Ikazuke

Ikura

The stand outs were the Aji, Ankimo, Grilled Toro, Ikura. MY only complain is that he can sometimes dab too much wasabi, other wise a very good choice for no BS traditional sushi. Bill for two came up to $79 before tips. I will definitely be returning soon.

Here's my ranking of recent places I have been to in the Bay Area:

Kyo-Ya

Sushi Ino

Sakae

Kiku of Tokyo (lunch only)

Uzen

Kirala

Miraku - Walnut Creek

Hana Zen

Sushi Groove - Walnut Creek

Avoid, not recommended:

Anglefish Sushi

Miraku - San Ramon

Damo Sushi - Plesant Hill

[umetaro]

Here's some pics from one of my visits there: http://flickr.com/photos/umetaro/search/text:ino/

If you like Ino, you should also try the sushi bar at anzu in the nikko hotel. Same traditional style and attention to detail.

[melkor]

Ino has excellent fish but he's a complete prick to any non-asian customers. Takara next door has as good or better sushi and a far more welcome attitude.

[SG-]

Ino has excellent fish but he's a complete prick to any non-asian customers.  Takara next door has as good or better sushi and a far more welcome attitude.

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I have to disagree, I has some sushi a month prior at Takara and was not at all impressed. Granted it wasn't at the bar but can't imagine it would be that much better sitting there.

[vintner]

Ino has excellent fish but he's a complete prick to any non-asian customers.  Takara next door has as good or better sushi and a far more welcome attitude.

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I've eaten at Ino Sushi over 250 times, so I've had a chance to see Inoue-san interacting with thousands of his customers, asian and non-asian (I'm non-asian).

Inoue-san goes out of his way to please every customer, asian or non-asian, who knows basic etiquette for a good sushi bar. I've seen thousands of very happy customers gush their appreciation. The only people I've ever seen Inoue-san deflate are those who pretend to knowledge that they really don't have, or who are loud and rude.

I've seen customers (asian and non-asian) come in and say frankly that they don't know a lot about sushi but would like to learn, and be treated with great kindness. I've seen customers come in and be able to discuss exactly which muscle in the neck of a tuna a specific bit of toro comes from, and be treated with equal care. You can get equally good sushi whether you order in English or in Japanese.

There are some ways to go wrong at Ino Sushi, or equally at any classic sushi bar.

(1) Ino Sushi is a beautiful oasis of quiet and manners, with fresh flowers and calligraphy. It's a mistake to talk loudly, or to let your celphone ring (or, worse, to answer it without going out). When you go in, wait in the tiny lobby to be welcomed and invited into the slightly-larger sushi-bar area. It's a mistake to be disrespectful to the server (who in this case happens to be Mrs. Inoue), or to be impatient about getting your sushi (Inoue-san will ask you when it's your turn). It's a mistake to try to sit in the middle of a group of empty chairs; with only nine seats at the bar, you should sit right next to someone else to leave contiguous empty seats. Quiet manners count for much, and throwing your weight around counts for nothing. (What a wonderful contrast to so many other restaurants!)

(2) Ino Sushi is a classic operation that serves what Japanese sushi bars traditionally serve--and nothing else. It's no use to get huffy when you can't get tempura rolls (nor tempura), or softshell crab rolls, or strange rolls involving cream cheese or made in the colors of football teams. In fact, hosomaki rolls have a very small place in good sushi; if you think of rolls as most of what you want, and you like a lot of good spicy jalepeno peppers in them, Ino Sushi is not for you.

(3) Ino Sushi (and its patrons) take sushi etiquette seriously, and are offended by elementary mistakes. It's not right to fill up your soy sauce dish and then ask for globs of extra wasabi to mix into it (the wasabi is applied when sushi is made); it's not right to dip the rice into soy sauce (only the topping), much less to set down a piece of sushi in the soy sauce to soak; it's not right to try to eat a piece of sushi in several bites, scattering it over the counter; it's not right to dip into soy sauce something which already has its own sauce. If you use too much soy sauce, or mix wasabi into it, or dip the rice part, you can't expect to get good sushi served to you. If you try to cover your ignorance by loudly saying that you like it that way, you are digging your own grave, and you'd be happier elsewhere.

(4) The most subtle way to go wrong I've seen several times, usually practised by non-asians. The customer comes in and affects the "old Asia hand" manner. He loudly claims to love great sake, but orders an inferior sake off the list rather than one of the good ones (Inoue-san gives excellent advice if asked). He boasts about all the places he's had sushi, and wonders when Nobu will come to San Francisco. He praises a fish that is good but ordinary, and fails to notice a fish that is exceptional. He refuses the offer of some house-made specialty. Then he orders some rare sushi item that he thinks Ino-san won't have, claiming to like it very much "although most Americans can't stand it". The joke is that Ino-san will indeed have it (he has vast stores refrigerated under the counters) and will serve up a good bowl of it, watching while the customer chokes it down. It's really a mistake to pretend to more knowledge than one has.

(4A) For some reason, when one of these customers sits next to me, he always leans over and says conspiratorially, "where do you go to get really good sushi?" I always answer "here". The customer then goes on to praise other places, which both I and Inoue-san know are not great at all. It's a very rude topic. I once was seated next to Alice Waters at Chez Panisse; I did not lean over to her table and say, "Hey, Alice, where do you go when you want some good grub?"

All of the (few) classic sushi bars are ideally places for regulars, where the customer's personal preferences can be catered to; you can't really put a sushi bar on a printed menu, or recite it on demand. Inoue-san has dozens of seasonal items in the course of a year, sometimes very scarce and only in for a couple of weeks, often not displayed. Ino-san has hundreds of special (all classic) preparations that can be made for someone who likes them, and when fish of a certain size are available, and when a certain seasonal mushroom is also available, etc. So the ideal situation is to go regularly and often so that your preferences can be learned.

A vast proportion of Ino Sushi's business is with such regulars. Most of the regulars just sit down and never order anything, eating whatever Inoue-san considers the best choice given the regular's personal taste, the fish available, seasonal factors, all in. But some people order just what they want: one regular (non-asian) has been coming in weekly for over twenty-five years and having the identical set of sushi every week, never anything new or different.

If you live close enough, Ino Sushi is the one sushi bar in San Francisco where you should cultivate the status of a regular. Don't expect a single visit to dazzle you with special treats perfectly calibrated to your taste. Go often and it will get better and better, eventually better than anything you've ever tasted.

If you are visiting Ino Sushi without time to become a regular, the best approach is to tell Inoue-san quietly that you are visiting, that you like everything, and that you'd like to have his best choice of sushi (or of sashimi and sushi, if you like). You need not worry about being cheated. Don't wimp out and order one of the "sets" from the printed menu--that merely guarantees that you'll get the simplest sushi (one maguro, one ebi, one ika, ...). You really need to ask Inoue-san for his choice, and he'll be very glad to serve you his best.

If you are new and you ask for Inoue-san's choice, he may ask you to estimate how many orders of sushi per person--this is just to get an idea of how to pace you. It's normal to eat up to eight or ten orders per person (each order is two pieces, so fifteen to twenty pieces), but you can order any amount, and you can add more. If you see a regular getting something that looks good, you can ask for that too. One thing that Inoue-san often does is to serve couples by giving them one order together (two pieces) of most fish, and two orders (four pieces) only of things certain to be appreciated, like a special toro. This allows a couple to try more things by splitting single orders (and if something is really good, you can always ask for a repeat order immediately). If you want to do that, best to mention it. You can eat more pieces of sushi at Ino, because Inoue-san puts a relatively small amount of rice with each topping of fish (just right), not the huge molded blocks of "fast-food sushi" places.

Realize that if Ino-san does not know you, and if you begin by saying that you don't like several common sushi items, e.g. "no uni, it's too slimy, and no ankimo, I hate it", you have to expect that Ino-san will then pull his punches and serve you what he thinks you will appreciate without much risk--so you won't get the best.

In fact, it's a mistake to refuse anything at Ino Sushi. None of the fish is old; if it's not great, Inoue-san is not serving it. Uni is usually borderline much of the time at most sushi bars, worldwide, but in years of eating at Ino I've yet to EVER get uni that wasn't sublimely fresh. It comes from different places (Boston, Japan, Vancouver, Santa Barbara) but it is always perfectly fresh. This is the place to try uni if you think you don't like it.

Inoue-san makes in-house things which are often mediocre at other bars because they are bought in. Take ankimo; most sushi bars have little sticks of ground-up "processed liver food" made commercially and cooked in molds, and most people don't like them, but Ino-san buys raw lobes of monkfish liver and cooks them himself by a unique process--a glorious marine liver flavor, better than any foie gras, not to be found anywhere else and not to be missed. Or ikura, usually bought in heavily-salted; Ino-san makes his own ikura starting with fresh salmon eggs and seasoning/marinating it himself. (So try "salmon three ways"--order ikura, fresh salmon, and grilled salmon-skin handroll.) Even the humble cooked shrimp, ebi, is amazing at Ino, juicy and full of flavor. (And the raw ama ebi gets the heads wonderfully grilled, much better than frying them.)

In hundreds of visits, thousands of orders of sushi at Ino Sushi, I've never gotten a single thing which wasn't excellent and perfectly fresh. This is not true anywhere else in San Francisco. You can be sure that you won't ever get any sushi which isn't delicious. (Notably, look inside the front door and you'll see the Health Dept.'s "100" perfect rating displayed; you don't see many of those.)

Ino Sushi is the one place where I have had the experience many times of sitting down and having my feet hit the bag in front of my neighbor's chair--a bag of knives, since the other customer really is a chef either on the way to or coming from working at another restaurant. I've sat next to chefs from many first-rank bay area restaurants, learning and appreciating.

Takara next door has as good or better sushi and a far more welcome attitude.

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Completely false. Takara isn't bad, but it isn't in even vaguely the same league as Ino Sushi. I've eaten there several times (while Ino is closed for Inoue-san's periodic holidays around the world), and never thought it at all comparable.

Probably, anyone who thinks that Takara is "as good or better" had better eat over there, and save Ino Sushi for those of us who can tell the difference and can recognize true excellence.

[Hiroyuki]

One thing is for sure: If Inoue is ever unfriendly to anyone in any way, it's Inoue's fault. There is no excuse for that. As a sushi shop owner(?), he has to be attentive to every detail of the shop, including the feelings of his customers, not just the freshness of the ingredients he serves.

If any of you suspect he is, please tell him that I said so. I want some explanation from him.

[Malik]

I agree with Melkor, Ino can be quite snarky with non-Japanese customers. Aside from that, there are definitely some things I don't like about his sushi. I agree completely with you on the Ankimo, which is definitely the best I've had in San Francisco. But his shiny fishes tend to be over marinated, though the Aji is often good. For example, I had kohada at Ino and at Kiss a few weeks apart, and Ino's was definitely not in the same league. Also, Ino has a tendency to put too much wasabi in his nigiri, this seems to be a frequent complaint that I've heard from lots of sources. This is compounded by the fact that Ino does not seem to have fresh wasabi (maybe that's a regulars only thing), only the fake green horseradish.

At Takara, the Ama Ebi is to die for thanks to the live tank and high turnover of a larger restaurant. I've always gotten fresh wasabi (I've only eaten at the bar, at Yuki-san's station) without having to ask for it. And I've definitely had some sublime pieces of fish there. On the last visit, the Hamachi Toro was incredible, much better than any I've had anywhere else. Also, the Hirame Usuzukuri was defintely better than the one I had at Ino a couple of months before.

[theREALfoodsnob]

  Probably, anyone who thinks that Takara is "as good or better" had better eat over there, and save Ino Sushi for those of us who can tell the difference and can recognize true excellence.

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Vintner,

Excellent post, and I can't wait to eat at Ino Sushi. I'm moving to SF in about a month and have started compiling a list of places to try. Your sushi tastes sound very similar to mine and there are few things better than a perfectly prepared piece of nigiri. It's sad that traditional sushi joints are disappearing - even in Japan where the American take on maki-zushi is spreading. I'm a "round eye" but I think I was Japanese in a previous life.

Where in SF could I enjoy a kaseki style meal?

Thanks,

Foodsnob