Hide sushi

Jeanne took me to Hide, a sushi restaurant on Sawtelle in mini-Japantown only a few blocks away from her apartment. We were finally getting hungry, two hours after we had originally intended on eating dinner, and drove the six blocks to the restaurant. The sweet Japanese hostess sat us immediately, after we had already missed our name being called. She put us next to the door and next to a couple who were very obviously on their first date.

Jeanne and I perused the menu, and place our order with another very sweet Japanese woman. We wanted the tempura vegetables, the albacore and yellowtail sashimi, the unagi, the salmon, the fish roe roll, the tuna roll, the spicy salmon skin, one bowl of miso soup, and two bottles of Asahi.

All the food that came out was delicious. The yellowtail and, in particular, the albacore sashimi were splendid, fresh and buttery and soft. The tempura batter for the vegetables was crisp and light, and was overall very good (although I refrained from the green bell pepper tempura due to my dislike of bell peppers, green ones in particular). The fish roe roll was a little weird, mainly because of the texture of the very tiny fish eggs, though not bad. The salmon skin was interesting as it had quite a bit of crunch and a nice fried flavor. And, the unagi, was fantastic—tender, salty, a taste of toastiness, richly textured on the tongue; I could’ve eaten nothing but unagi and had been satisfied.

Throughout the meal, Jeanne and I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation of the couple next to us, which felt so awkward. We wondered and questioned in Cantonese whether all first dates are all that lame, and I was slightly enraged when the couple questioned why anyone would chose to live in San Francisco since they didn’t see any appealing qualities of the city. Jeanne and I left before the couple did, so we don’t know how their date ended. But, they both seemed equally boring, so perhaps a good match.