Sushi Goemon Restaurant — Restaurant in San Francisco

I have walked by this place a few times and thought it's a super cute small restaurant off the main street so I finally gave it a try! I was skeptical given reviews, but honestly it was a gem! Note, there are only two servers and two sushi chefs, it's a small restaurant and they know that. Be patient and you'll have a blast. Summary: amazing food, decent service but very friendly staff, great sake, and great price. We had 3 people and ate like royalty.

First off, had the daiginjo sake flight and it was super smooth with a variety of flavors. Started with 1) hamachi with truffle oil, radish, micro greens and avocado and 2) uni gem (uni, quail egg, salmon roe in a spoon) and 3) an sashimi omakase sampler. All of this was super fresh and almost buttery with unique flavors. Definitely get the Kizami Wasabi to pair with your sashimi Added 4 rolls: 1) hamachi jalapeno 2) ishikawa roll 3) kombucha white tuna 4) tropical. Maki was well balanced rice to ingredients and not really thick fat pieces which I appreciated. The scallop was silky and not rubbery at all. The kombucha was really unique and just flat out delicious (the slight tempura added the perfect crunch) and the tropical was definitely unique and like a good way to end the meal. The macadamia nut balanced the sweetness of the mango and unagi well. We left not stuffed, but not hungry at all either. Server forgot the miso (part of omakase), but it wasn't that much of a loss, they brought out edamame and extra Kizami Wasabi during the meal as it was taking longer than expected. As we were leaving we had a really homey conversation with the manager who is so sweet. It's definitely a neighborhood spot and...

Wow! I don't think i was expecting it to be this bad.

We wanted to go to Izakaya for some ramen, but came here because they told us to f off. We should of just went home. I guess there was a reason that there were 3 Japanese restaurants on the same street and this was the only one that was empty.

It seemed like a nice place so we went in. We wanted noodles so whatever.

Two of my friends ordered the Gyoza+Udon. The broth was flavorless and the noodles tasted a little off. My other friend got Karage Katsu, which was gross and oily. On top of that the sauce they had for it was just vinegar. What is this? A Chinese restaurant?

I ended up getting the Beef Sukiyaki which was like eating candied beef. It was way too sweet and the shitake mushrooms tasted like alcoholic! Does that mean they were fermenting? I have no idea.

Next, we move on to the service. Which was horrible. I think they were understaffed, but the service was just too horrible to ignore. We sat there for a while and some old lady came to take our order. We ordered and waited 20 minutes before 2 dishes partially came out, which was the gyoza. Then the noodles came like 5 minute later. Then 5 minutes after that the Karage. Then about 5-10 minutes after that a different waitress comes over and asks me what's wrong.

You know what's wrong? Everyone was done eating and I hadn't gotten my food. WTF? I got it and I ended up eating all the beef as to not waste too much food. It was just gross. Worst meal of my life. Goemon, I don't think I'm ever...

We ended up joining the waitlist for Sushi Goemon after finding out Izakaya Sozai will take close to 2 hours. We saw this is highly rated on Google Map so we figured it must be pretty solid. Long story short it really wasn’t.

Long story: When the staff was taking us to our table, she stopped halfway to talk to her friends. She couldn’t stop talking to them until another staff member told her that we’re still waiting to be seated. Awkward, but okay we can let this slide. We had to wait for awhile before we even got water. I made eye contact a few time to order, but she ignored it. It was the same lady that sat us. A table that sat after us already had their food out before we even get to order. That table was empty for a bit when we sat. They turned out to be friends of the staff (we heard them converse and joke around often). I mean it’s fine to treat your friends well, but it’s really disrespectful to make everyone else wait. The uni oyster gems came at the end after the soft shelled crab and uni temaki. It came without oysters the first time around. They took it back and gave us the right order. However, the time it took for each food item was excruciating. The starters should’ve came first but it was flip flopped. Absolutely nothing good to say about the service.

Well let’s try to end this in a good note. The uni in the handroll wasn’t much, but we had worse. The uni oyster gems are delicious albeit small. Giving them 2 stars since the food...