Kappou Gomi

Welcome to SF, P! Yes, there's another P in the house now--it's nice to have the company :)  To celebrate P's return the Bay Area, we hit up what is now one of our favorite restaurants in SF: Kappou Gomi on Geary/19th.

P and I were starved by the time we arrived with J, so we started with a bowl of hot rice. It came with assorted pickles, which were all quite tasty.

Sashimi! This is mejina, aka. sea bream/snapper. It's kind of a bouncy sashimi, not too fatty, and a very nice light way to start the meal. It was covered in a paper thin lattice of daikon which just blew me away. Does anyone know how they handle the knifework on something like that?

Sea urchin sashimi, hands down my favorite dish at Kappou Gomi. It's the only repeat dish we ordered from last time, because I 100% insisted. :)

Agedashi mochi. I'd never had deep fried mochi before, but I'll definitely be eating this again! The fluffy mochi was lightly chewy, and crispy around the edges. It's served in a dashi-kombu broth with a piece of stewed pumpkin and lots of ground daikon to give the broth texture.

Kani Ae. A lot of people on yelp said that fans of crab guts have to get this, but honestly I was not blown away. It's a nice salad, I liked it just fine, but it was definitely not "gutty." It's a refreshing dish to have if you enjoy Dungeness. But if you're expecting it to taste like the stuff you spoon out of a crab carapace, you'll be disappointed.

Grilled conger eel. It's not every day that you see this kind of eel on a menu. Conger eels are huge (10 ft?), and live in the ocean. Usually Japanese restaurants just serve the smaller unagi (freshwater eel), doused in teriyaki  sauce.

Baked uni. Really unique! J had squid baked in an apple last time and liked it, so we tried it this time with uni. It was...interesting. Everyone else loved it, but I am not one for baked fruit. So while it was interesting, I would not order it for myself.

What I would do, naturally, is take a photo of the cross-section so you can see for yourself. I also ate the slice of pickled lotus root.

Egg custard clay pot. This was a  warm and homey finish to a delicious meal. Next time: noodles and shabu shabu!

We left room to go to Joe's down the street. No, I did not get a scoop of the flavor of the month. I did try it though, and it's...interesting. Try mixing a pea-sized bit of wasabi with a golf-ball sized scoop of vanilla ice cream and you'll have a good idea.