Hotaru Restaurant
In 2007 the Chronicle's food editor Miriam Morgan called this one of the best values among downtown San Mateo's Japanese restaurants. The kitchen cooks home food: udon and soba, donburi, teriyaki, fried things.
Why go
Hotaru means firefly. The kitchen's own page walks the year: First with the spring breeze, Gindara on the grill. Then a cool Tempura Zaru-Soba in the hot summer heat. Maybe some fresh Maguro Sushi in the red of autumn leaves. To the piping hot Nabeyaki Udon on a snowing winter day.
3 Morgan found the room bright and immaculate, and the dinners complete: an entree with salad, miso soup and rice.1 Foodnut, a Bay Area blog, has eaten most of the neighborhood. It rates the two sushi rooms nearby, Sushi Sam and Kisaku, as good and dearer.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: the tonkatsu. Morgan called the lightly breaded pork cutlet one of the best choices here. It comes as the entree in a complete dinner.1
- Order: the beef sukiyaki, which Foodnut recommends outright: beef in the sweet broth with cabbage, carrots, mushrooms and tofu.2
- Order: the hamachi kama when it is on. Foodnut says this kitchen is the only one that throws in a bonus piece of the fish.2
- Avoid: the ebi in the nigiri set. Foodnut found the fish good and the shrimp forgettable.2
What locals & experts say
- Miriam Morgan, then food editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, in 2007:
Lots of places vie for your eating dollar, but one of the best values is Hotaru.
She closed on the room being full:No wonder the place is packed 365 days a year.
1 - Foodnut, after working through the block:
Hotaru is a cramped small place with lots of people inside and people waiting outside.
2
Good to know
- The specials are on the wall, not on the menu. Foodnut says to read them before you order.2
- The California roll in the udon special is made with imitation crab. Foodnut says pay the upgrade.2
- What I have on this kitchen is old. Morgan's verdict is from 2007. The newest account of a meal here is a blog's 2016 visit. Treat every price you read as history.12
Verdict
could-visit — Order the complete dinners and the cooked plates. That is where the money goes furthest, and it is why the line forms.