Feast Blog

Despite an interesting cocktail menu, I was drawn to a three-glass Riesling sampler, what they call the Butterfly flight; Domaines Schlumberger “Les Princes Abbes” Alsace 2004, Gainey Vineyard Santa Ynes Valley 2003, and Saint M Dr. Loosen Pfaltz Germany 2005.

These went reasonably well with the two appetizers I ordered; Duck Confit Spring Rolls served with a Chinese hot mustard & honey dipping sauce and Kahlua Pig with Butter Lettuce Cups served with hoisin sauce and toasted cashews with green onions.

For Asian-inspired bar food, the spring rolls were quite good – very light, crispy wrappers, perfectly fried. Honestly, the meat inside could have been duck confit or pork or chicken. It really didn’t matter. The sauce was interesting in that accompanied with the rolls, there was an obvious sweetness which I thought might overwhelm upon entry, but which expanded in the mouth to a pretty decent mustard spice.

The Kahlua Pig with lettuce cups was very ample and between the two dishes, far more food than one person could possibly eat. The butter lettuce was a nice change from the classic head lettuce used in lettuce cup offerings. The pork was riddled with a fine dice of assorted bell peppers; orange, yellow, and red. both the pork and the hoisin was topped with toasted cashews which were so finely chopped as to actually look like finely grated cheese or Brazilian yucca powder.

Not bad for an afternoon interpose because I stumbled on it, but hardly a destination restaurant for me. Mostly mediocre and unmemorable.

I have become a broken record on the state of Yakitori in San Francisco; you can’t throw a dead cat in any neighborhood of that illustrious city and not hit a Japanese restaurant, yet there is a not a single yakitori establishment anywhere in it’s small confines. Yeah, I have heard of a few in South San Francisco or down on the peninsula, but in San Francisco proper, there is nary formal barbeque utilizing the essential Kishu Binchō-tan, or charcoal wood. This means my occasional trips to Southern California always necessitate a visit to a Yakitori restaurant, of which there are a plethora (go figure). Shin-Sen-Gumi has been my go-to yakitori for years but on the occasion of hitting L.A. for my birthday, old friend and local food writer Richard Foss suggested a new joint he had heard good things about, Izakaya Bincho in Redondo Beach. It was slightly surreal because Redondo was where I called home for almost a decade and left over seven years ago for the wiles of Napa (eventually decamping for San Francisco). Odd to walk the boardwalk, hear the Saturday night mating calls from nearby Naja’s, a local watering hole, and see the changes in a neighborhood I had known so well…

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