For my vacation out to central oregon, I connected through SFO. I got a nice surprise when I was upgraded into first class for my PHL to SFO flight. As you can see by my outstretched stump legs and the inability of the bottoms of my flexed feet to actually touch the divider, first class does not really matter to me, at least not comfort wise. I only get excited for it because of the free food. I’ve been reading this book called “Near A Thousand Tables” which is about the history of food. I highly recommend it!

The dinner choices were chicken quesadillas or pasta with mushroom sauce. Since I don’t like mushrooms, I went with the quesadillas. These really weren’t very good at all. The quesadillas themselves were pretty bland and the tortillas had gotten crunchy. The pico de gallo was the worst part though. They absolutely tasted like nothing. Nothing at all. It did not taste like tomatoes nor did it taste like onions. It kind of defied logic. But the saving grace was the warm oatmeal raisin cookie. Seriously, this might have been one of the best cookies I’ve ever had in my life. And it was on a flight. The flight attendant said it was a good cookie, and damn he was beyond correct.

So our flight to Redmond/Bend, OR actually got cancelled. They gave us the runaround for a very long time and delayed the flight for hours and hours until they finally cancelled it right around midnight west coast time, saying they couldn’t find a first officer. When the cockpit deplaned, two pilots got off. They totally screwed us. But with that cancellation came a free hotel stay and free breakfast vouchers. At least we’d be full on our flight the next morning. The food options at SFO are pretty darn good, especially if you go to one of the main food areas in the United terminal. Since it is airport food prices, the $15 actually doesn’t get you very far. J got a shredded chicken salad.

I tried to go as luxurious as possible, even though it was breakfast, and ordered the nabe yaki seafood udon at a japanese joint. The one thing you can count on in san francisco is the ubiquity of japanese food joints, even at the airport. The broth was a little bit on the bland side, but it was still damn good as far as airport food goes. I’ll take this over a sbarro pizza slice, any day!

F had sent us a link to a byob sushi place weeks ago, and we finally were able to make plans to check it out. A fairly newish spot, open since February, Fat Salmon is a sleek and modern place in Washington Square. The decor actually reminds me of Morimoto’s a bit, probably due to the waviness in some of the design elements. All of the furnishings are clean and white. On a weekday evening, the place was pretty packed. Since it was a byob, M brought along a japanese cocktail concoction. It was delicious and strong and had me at first sip.

I love the standard green salad with the ginger dressing that is offered by pretty much any and every sushi restaurant. But not all of the ginger dressings are up to par. I’m happy to say that the green salad here was one of the best. There’s even cucumber and green bell pepper slices and the dressing is zesty and amazing. And it’s a good sized salad. The miso soup is perfectly nice as well.

On the right, that slop of mess, is the Rolling Fire. It is a roll with shrimp tempura and cucumber, topped with broiled spicy scallop sauce and some imitation crab meat. And oh, it’s like totally spicy. Man, it surprised me. You can see that it’s sort of sitting in a red pool of firey oil. It’s still good, but it is quite the shocker. So be careful! On the left is Mr. Shiro, one of my favorites of the evening. It is eel tempura, avocado, crunch w/spicy sauce on the inside, topped with broiled spicy white tuna and tomato.

Here is the Dragonfly Roll, which actually does look like a dragon. It has shrimp tempura, cucumber, and spicy sauce on the inside, and is topped with eel, avocado, and eel sauce. There’s nothing about this roll that anyone could dislike. It’s great.

On top is the White Forest, my absolute favorite roll of the evening. It was shrimp tempura on the inside with spicy sauce (you could also get salmon tempura), topped with a heap of pico de gallo and our cream. It was like a sushi salsa roll, and I absolutely went crazy for it. On the bottom is the Lost Rainbow, with spicy crab stick, scallion, and masago on the inside, topped with tuna, salmon, white fish, ikura in sesame soy sauce, and cucumber. This would have been really good, but the ikura on top was super salty and it kind of ruined it for me. It overpowered everything when it could have been a nice compliment. So it turned out to be my least favorite roll of the evening. All in all, this was great food with great friends. Fat Salmon is a nice find. Their main thing seems to be crazy rolls. Their menu had dozens. So if you like a great variety of special rolls, then this is the place for you!

J wanted to get sushi on the next night, so Brent sent us over to the Gold Coast neighborhood to Ra Sushi. This is a hip joint, a place to be seen. You’re not going to get the best quality sushi here. If you’re looking for japanese sushi chefs that took four years to learn how to make sushi rice, this isn’t the place. But it’s fun and they have cool and funky rolls so you can share and have a good time. It’s not traditional in any way. I got a girley drink and it was delicious and large and strong. I very much enjoyed it.

I wanted some soup, but I didn’t want regular miso, and I was intrigued by this spicy version that was on the menu. It was marked as a favorite dish. Ok, why not, I thought. So this miso hot! soup is seriously spicy. When we both tried it, we both immediately started coughing because it was so freakin hot. And for probably about the first five sips, I still coughed. But then my throat got used to it and the coughing subsided. And I was finally able to enjoy this. First off, it’s tons of soup, and it comes in this cauldron. And really, it’s like a cauldron of spice. It’s so spicy, and probably unecessarily spicy, but it is a good soup, with tasty shrimp and veggies in it. But man, it’s hard to eat and hard to get started because of how damn spicy it is. They really should warn you with like ten chili peppers next to it or something on the menu. It’s like the hellmouth in a bowl. But it tastes really good if any of your taste buds aren’t burned off!

The roll on the bottom, the mango lobster roll, was one recommended by Brent. It had lobster mix, avocado, cucumber, was topped with thinly sliced mango, and served with mango-tobiko and kiwi-wasabi sauces.  This was my favorite one. It was a cool contrast of slightly sweet and savory and the two different sauces provided some key variety. The roll on top was the dragon roll, with crab and cucumber on the inside, topped with avocado, eel, and some eel sauce. It was probably my second favorite of the night.

The crazy soft shell crab roll in the front was wrapped with soy paper instead of any kind of nori. It was a bit strange, but hey, whatever works. It held it together just as well as the nori. The funky looking green roll at the top was the crunchy calimari roll, another recommendation from Brent. It had tempura calamari, crab mix, and cream cheese, was topped with spinach tempura bits, and drizzled with sweet eel sauce. I really liked this one as well.

Lastly, we had another dish that Brent recommended, the hot mess. It’s not even really sushi. It is crispy rice balls topped with spicy crab mix, that are baked and finished with jalapeno and cilantro. This was a bit too rich for my taste. And I wasn’t that into these crispy rice balls (or rectangles). They actually served plain crispy rice balls along with the miso hot! soup, which I did like for dipping into the firey broth. But I didn’t really care for these hot messes. We didn’t mean to order this much food, as it was quite too much, but we enjoyed it. The food comes out as it’s ready, so you don’t get courses or anything. Service was fine, but nothing to write home about. This dinner was fun, but it’s really more about the experience and hang-out factor here, and not really the food. It’s definitely non-traditional sushi. So if you’re into that, and if you’re rich and young and like to eat, then it’s a pretty perfect spot for you!