I’m almost caught up with my round-the-world eating
spree. Left Milan, went back to work, reviewed the Mexican restaurant next door
and now we head back up to San Francisco. One night after work, our auditors
took most of the team out to dinner (an annual thing) at a restaurant in San
Francisco called Nabe. I’d never heard of it before but that means nothing
since there are so many great restaurants in the city and I haven’t been to
even a tiny fraction of them.
Nabe was a small enough restaurant that they hired out
the whole place for a couple of hours that night and could seat the 40 or so of
us who went, albeit just barely. There were 2 and 4-toppers as well as a long
table in the center of the room that could accommodate 16-20 people (I didn’t
count). I sat at a 4-topper with 3 of my coworkers and at each place was a
burner. Because Nabe was a hot pot restaurant. If you’ve never been to one,
you’re missing out.
The premise is you order what broth you wanted as well as
what proteins, veggies and noodles (as extras) that didn’t already come with
your original order. They bring it out in a soup pot, set it on the burner,
turn on the burner, bring your proteins and vegetables and you cook your dinner
once your chosen broth was sufficiently hot enough.
Each person could order their own “set” and Nabe’s
recommendation is for a maximum of 2 people to share one set. What they mean by
“set” is half a hot pot. For efficiency’s sake, if you wanted a different order
or broth than the person across from you who was sharing your burner and
therefore the same pot, they had a divider in the pot so you could each enjoy
your half of the pot without commingling your set.
 |
| Tako Su Octopus Salad |
At my table of four, we started with the Tako Su Octopus
Salad with cucumber and vinaigrette and Tofu with Kimchee. Plain eater here passed on those. But I did
partake of and enjoy the Kurobuta Pork Sausage (delicious) and the Gyoza filled
with Kurobuta pork (also good).
 |
| Kurobuta Pork Sausage |
 |
| Tofu with Kimchee |
 |
| Gyoza |
But the main event was the hot pot set. I ordered the Sukiyaki
which was Wagyu beef and shirataki in Warishita broth. I don’t know what all
that was but it sounded good. My
coworker, Eileen, who sat across from me and shared the same pot and burner got
a miso broth so we had the pot with a divider. Super cool and super convenient
for me because my Sukiyaki with its “Warishita broth” came with a bunch of
veggies in it. Um, okay. My head knows that’s what helps make the broth so
tasty but it would’ve gone to waste with me if Eileen hadn’t been a veggie
lover and very accommodating in my tossing most of my vegetables over our hot
pot divider into her broth.
 |
| Sukiyaki |
 |
| Miso broth on the bottom half of the divided hot pot set |
They also brought out a separate plate of vegetables for
those who ordered the miso broth since miso broth came out plain without any
veggies already added. Once our hot pot began bubbling, I started adding the
thin slices of Wagyu beef. I don’t do hot pot often so I wasn’t sure of the
“right” way to do it but I figure there’s no wrong way since it was my hot pot
and my dinner. My broth already came with udon noodles in it but you can also
order more noodles. They offered a bowl of rice which I took them up on, the
better to enjoy the super-freaking-delicious broth. Everything was good but for
the broth alone, I’d go back again and I’m telling everyone I know they should
go to Nabe and order it.
Normally with hot pot or even a really good ramen place,
I like the broth initially but as it keeps cooking and you eat your way through
the bowl (or pot), it tends to get more and more salty so I tend to only
eat/drink/slurp it at the beginning. Not so at Nabe. The broth was amazing from
beginning to end. Even after I had cooked all my proteins (we ordered scallops
as an add-in), I couldn’t seem to stop eating/drinking the broth. I wasn’t even
hungry anymore but I still wanted the broth. Did I mention it was
super-freaking-delicious broth? Because it was.
Fortunately, since the hot pot was, you know, hot, I
couldn’t actually pick it up and slurp the broth straight out of it so I
eventually did back off because I was getting full. But not so full that I
didn’t have dessert. There were only three desserts on the menu and I chose the
one that seemed most palatable to me: butter mochi cake with either black
sesame ice cream or green tea ice cream.
 |
| Butter Mochi Cake with Black Sesame ice cream |
Here’s a not-so-secret quirk of mine: I don’t have very
Asian taste buds. Doesn’t matter that I’m Asian. I still don’t like many
traditional Asian flavors. I don’t care for mango, ube, jackfruit (my Filipino
ancestors would cringe at me), lychees, guava, passionfruit, dragonfruit, green tea
or, as it turned out, black sesame. At least not in ice cream. I ordered my
butter mochi cake to come with black sesame ice cream, thinking I would at
least try it. Which I did. Turns out I don’t like black sesame ice cream
either. I don’t mind sesame flavor in savory foods and occasionally cook with
sesame oil and sesame seeds. But I didn’t care for the flavor in ice cream. My
Asian companions who shared the dessert with me thought the ice cream was
delicious so okay, yeah, it’s just me.
I did better with the butter mochi cake. Mochi has a
chewy, spongy texture and the cake was better than the one I’d tried to makefrom scratch some time ago; it wasn’t as sweet as mine was and had better
flavor and texture. My non-Asian taste buds would’ve liked it with vanilla ice
cream instead of black sesame or green tea but that’s neither here nor there.
 |
| Me with a few of my coworkers in front of the California Academy of Sciences |
After dinner, our evening outing included A Night at the
Museum at the California Academy of Sciences which wasn’t too from Nabe. The place
was quite busy for a Thursday night but it turns out the Night at the Museum
only occurred every Thursday and rumor in the crowd said it was a “good date
night” so that might explain some of the activity. We didn’t have a set agenda
other than to wander around aimlessly, chatting amongst ourselves and queueing
up at the bar. I don’t drink so I stuck to the wandering around aimlessly and
chatting part.
 |
| Jellyfish |
I only took a few pictures as some of the more
interesting exhibits didn’t have good lighting for cell phone pictures (most of
mine turned out too dark). The jellyfish were the prettiest ones to me, as long
as they were in their tank with the changing lights to show off their
translucence.
