Robin, one of San Francisco’s top omakase cafés, opens in Menlo Park area
One of San Francisco’s most profoundly respected sushi eateries takes a major jump down the Landmass today. Robin Menlo Park, a second café from the group behind Michelin Guide-recorded Robin in Hayes Valley, opens Wednesday, September 20 in a staggering space from Lundberg Plan. The café will be open for supper from 5 to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday and reservations are now accessible by means of Resy. The main thing you won’t find nearby is a menu.
Gourmet specialist Adam Tortosa, who opened the first Robin back in 2017, says he and the Menlo Park group, including tasks and overseeing accomplice Michael Huffman and vital accomplice Lloyd Sacks, trust Robin’s menu-less feasting experience will make omakase more congenial for coffee shops — regardless of whether they’ve eaten at comparative cook driven sushi cafés previously. As at the San Francisco café, Robin Menlo Park will not have a composed menu for clients to examine. All things being equal, staff will direct them through the feast in view of their eating inclinations and spending plan, with supper accessible on a sliding scale between $109-$189. ” It’s certainly not a conventional omakase experience,” Tortosa says. ” We’re doing whatever it takes not to ship you to Japan.”
In light of the café’s custom way to deal with omakase, burger joints are probably not going to at any point have a similar encounter at least a time or two. Be that as it may, the eatery has some mark contributions, which will be ported down to Menlo Park from San Francisco. On the nigiri front, hope to see Mt. Lassen Steelhead matched with yellow peach and nearby Half Moon Straight wasabi and, for a sumptuous chomp, saltwater-put away Japanese uni delegated with white sturgeon caviar from Sacramento. Sashimi could incorporate hirame kombujime, or California halibut relieved in Japanese kombu presented with coconut and kabosu verjus, jicama, and smoked pineapple. The kitchen, drove by head sushi culinary specialist Kentaro Ikuta, will likewise put out plates, for example, toro tartare made with morel decreased soy and sesame noodles wearing Japanese “chimichurri” and dark truffle.
Huffman says the additional room in both the kitchen and lounge area — for instance, there’s a different confidential feasting space and seats for around 50 cafes in Menlo Park — will permit the second café to get considerably more imaginative, in spite of the fact that, for the initial not many weeks, they’re keeping things somewhat close.“So many of the limitations at Robin San Francisco are based on square footage,” Huffman says. “So [Menlo Park] will be familiar, but with more bells and whistles.”
One such “ringer”? A full alcohol permit. Not at all like at the San Francisco café, Menlo Park burger joints will actually want to arrange two or three fingers of Japanese or American bourbon or a glass or jug of purpose. The eatery cooperated with Suntory to gain one of those extravagant highball machines, so they’ll drive carbonation into mixed drinks to arrange. The purpose and wine list favors determinations from the Narrows Region remembering purpose from San Francisco’s Sequoia and Nook for Oakland. Yet, the people who need a jug of cultivator Champagne or an old-world white, you’ll have choices for that, as well.
Concerning the space, the group says they maintained that Robin Menlo Park should have its own character however the overall energy — dim, present day, surly — will be natural to those who’ve been to the San Francisco unique. They utilized a program of neighborhood craftsmans to make a lounge area that feels ages from the unfilled, new-form white box they began with. Ceramicists Nicole Pilar and Asato Ikeda made custom dishes and purpose glasses, separately, and Caroline Lizarraga filled one wall with a painting that repeats the one tracked down in the main eatery. Extra craftsmanship comes from Ferris Plock, Michelle Morby, and Stan Zienka.
Huffman and Tortosa say they’ve been looking at a second venture together basically since they opened Robin in Hayes Valley. The café has been an irrefutable hit, even in a city swarmed with first rate sushi and Japanese feasting choices. What they say coffee shops can find at Robin that isn’t really the case somewhere else is a climate that is purposefully more loose. Omakase can be scary and “unfun,” Tortosa yields, yet at Robin, they’re taking a “Northern California approach” — both when it comes to featuring non-traditional local ingredients and the approach to service. “We just want you to enjoy yourself,” Tortosa says.
