Sasa Japanese Restaurant — Restaurant in San Francisco

Located on the 2nd floor of the East Mall (above the Daiso), the interior is just a little larger than it looks from the outside. I've always seen this place packed during the meal rush times on weekends and got a reservation for my visit on Saturday for a 6pm dinner, which worked out as a good idea in hindsight.

We were seated quickly due to our reservation. Service was incredibly spartan with the staff swinging by the table only for the essentials (what's the order, bringing food with a quick intro of what the nigiri are, and dropping off the check). No questions on how's the food, if we need anything else. I wish there was more on the service side, especially as our tea went cold, but understand they're in the thick of the dinner rush.

Food was hit and miss. The soba-cha was just okay as the teapot arrived less than hot to begin with, and was cold far before we finished eating. We got the spicy salmon tataki too start which was great! Good flavor and fun as an appetizer. The unagi kabayaki was also good, with the eel flavorful, miso hot, and chawanmushi silky. It was plenty large for an entree. However, the 10 piece sushi tasting was a huge disappointment, as each piece was loaded with far too much wasabi. Big green blobs sandwiched been the fish and rice, resulting in the whole tasting having just an overwhelming flavor of wasabi in every piece. We were hopeful it was just the first few pieces, but the amount was consistently too much on all ten. Peeling apart the nigiri and scraping it off didn't help the wasabi menace as it had permeated all the slices of fish by the time we decided to give it a shot. The fish looked visually great, but they all had far too much wasabi. We were successful with getting wasabi off one tuna piece, and the fish was alright flavor-wise once it was mostly wasabi free.

If I do go back, I would stick carefully to only some items on the menu, and the avoid nigiri/omakase. As there's plenty of other fantastic spots in Japantown I'm okay with...

I came based on a friend's recommendation, and he's a real foodie who eats at high end sushi restaurants all the time. As for myself, I've been to Japan twice, and have eaten at good sushi restaurants all over the U.S. My short take on this place is that the food is of good quality. The execution of the dishes are pretty good. However, I cannot give a good review based on a couple details: Cleanliness: I sat at the bar and observed that none of the sushi chefs wore hats. Cleanliness and tidiness is of the utmost importance in a high end Japanese restaurant (shouldn't it be for all restaurants?), and you would pretty much always see sushi chefs at the bar wearing hats. This tainted my dining experience a bit. I'm by no means OCD, but found the sight of it a bit disturbing, as I kept picturing the possibility of finding hair in my food. Pacing of the Meal: I ordered the omakase, which is a multi-course meal. A good restaurant that serves a tasting menu, including sushi restaurants, can control the pacing of the meal so that there would not be long gaps between the courses. I must say that I was a bit disappointed that it took as much as 15 - 20 minutes between several of the courses. It makes the meal unnecessarily long and affects the dining experience.

Other than that, I thought the food itself was actually pretty good. Good enough for 4 stars on their own. The portions are small but that's standard for traditional Japanese serving sizes, for example the sushi's are supposed to be bite size, to be consumed with one bite. That being said, although the basic omakase is $95, which is not expensive at all by high end standards, the quantity of food will not satisfy an average adult eater. I'm not a big eater, and did also add the supplement for an extra $35, and found that to be just the right amount of food for me, but I think most people would still a...

We entered the restaurant and the manager showed us to our seats. The atmosphere and surroundings were impressive and clean so we felt comfortable. We ordered two sushi roll dishes and waited for about 30 minutes for both, one was for to-go and the other was for dining. The taste of the sushi roll was mediocre and ok. After my group ate the whole sushi roll, I was finishing my glass of wine. I had paid for all of the items and I was in the process of finishing my glass of white wine it was until the manager came up to us and told us to leave as there was a reservation awaiting our table and we were understanding. I felt like what had happened was rude and inconsiderate and as I was leaving, he said something in Thai behind our backs and I caught what he said as I was leaving. I responded back to him in Thai and said why did you tell the server in front of our face that “I asked him to leave for you, basically saying in Thai that I kicked them out for you, with a smile on his face, like he was proud of what he said, not expecting that I would understand what he said, in Thai. I told him that I knew what he said and that was very rude of him and disrespectful and he did not apologize and he ran off. Wow.., this is how a manager from this place treated us imagine how many customers have been mistreated and talked bad behind their backs, and tried to kick them out of the table and we weren’t even there for that long. I had to rush to finish up my glass of wine because they claimed that they needed the table for a reservation even though there were four other...