Just in from Japan

Some of the most exquisite Asian food in the city is now being served on Lombard’s Motel Alley.

Some restaurants debut with a bang—trumpeting big-name chefs, interior designers, fashionable locales and crowd-pleasing menus of the California, farmer-forward genre. But it’s the risk-taking restaurants we find ourselves rooting for—and right now that includes Hime.
Pronounced HEE-may, San Francisco’s newest, and easily most progressive, Japanese restaurant quietly opened four months ago on the unsexy Marina thoroughfare that is Lombard Street, next to the Presidio Inn motel. The space, which formerly housed Market Place Café, has been completely remodeled. A forest of green tea–hued bamboo screens the windows. The modern dining room, accented in burnt orange, leads to the tiny Buddah Bar in the back (where black-and-white kung fu movies will eventually be projected). To the sound of world beats, patrons peruse the izakaya-style menu, a small-plates dining experience that’s all the rage in some of Tokyo’s trendiest restaurants.

Although Hime offers the expected list of sushi rolls, the restaurant isn’t aiming for a Western take on Japanese food, with a little wasabi and ginger thrown in. Chef Kumihiro Kinda, 28, who moved here a year ago from Osaka, spent years learning his craft at a kaiseki restaurant.

A plate of sashimi includes unctuous Santa Barbara uni and buttery bluefin tuna belly cut into cubes, all dramatically served on a bowl of ice lit from beneath. The Japanese Garden—an assortment of meticulously prepared poached vegetables, such as daikon and kabocha squash, paired with hijiki seaweed—is an even better example of the highly aesthetic kaiseki tradition, which originated as part of the Japanese tea ceremony. It’s as beautiful as it is delicious. If the Miyazaki beef flown in from Japan is available (and you have $49 to spare), don’t miss it. Cooked over a teppanyaki (an iron griddle), it’s served atop shimeji mushrooms along with green-tea salt, shiso salt and yuzu kosho, an intense condiment made with yuzu (a type of sour citrus) and chiles.

“I want to show the real Japanese taste to the American people,” says co-owner Eiichi Mochizuki, who also owns Shabuway, a shabu-shabu restaurant with locations in Mountain View and San Mateo. Considering Hime has free parking to boot, it’s obviously set to offer locals more than one awakening. 

Hime 2353 Lombard St. 415-931-7900

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