Chīsai Sushi Club
Erik Aplin ran the kitchen at Ichi Sushi, then came back to the same narrow Mission Street room and opened his own counter in it. He serves a three-bite uni carbonara: fresh udon, bacon from Cream Co. Meats, a uni cream sauce, and a thick blanket of raw uni over the top. The omakase comes at several lengths and one of them is entirely vegetarian.
Why go
Aplin cooked at Akiko's and Robin in San Francisco and at Matsuhisa Vail and Morimoto Napa before that, and he uses Western technique on purpose. The hand rolls are the clearest case. They arrive open-faced in custom wooden holders. The BLTA is bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado under yuzu kosho mayo. The Seafood Tower holds a raw scallop, Fort Bragg uni and ikura under melted nori butter.
Aplin marinates tomatoes in shoyu until they read as maguro, and cures carrots into a deli-style lox with cucumber, red onion and capers. The vegetarian menu is a whole build.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the uni carbonara. Aplin serves it as the last savory course whichever omakase you take.1
- Order: the taiyaki to close, a fish-shaped waffle of corn muffin batter filled with Nutella under housemade hojicha ice cream.1
What locals & experts say
- Erik Aplin, to Lauren Saria for Eater SF, September 2021:
I like to call this an American-Japanese restaurant. It's not necessarily Japanese-American.
1 - Eater SF, on its affordable prix fixe map: it lists a fourteen-course omakase at $95 and a vegetarian omakase at $70, as that map stood in 2022.2
Good to know
- Getting in: reservations go through the restaurant's own site.
- Supplements: Eater notes a long list of them on top of whichever menu you take.2
- Where: 3369 Mission Street, at the Bernal Heights end.
Verdict
could-visit — Say at the booking if somebody at the table is vegetarian, because the kitchen runs a separate omakase for them. Ask what tonight's price is before you sit down.