Perhaps ahead of the Japanese Izakaya small plates trend in San Francisco, Tokyo GoGo in the Mission has been open since 1998 serving sushi and fusion food in a J-Pop atmosphere. It’s an easy place to overlook in the Mission since there are so many restaurants nearby; however, it fit the bill for a noshing at the bar one evening for us.
Tokyo GoGo has a full bar, but a quick glance through their cocktail menu showed that their drinks tend to be on the sweet side (something that seems to be similar at other Japanese fusion places). We spied the Hendrick’s Gin and asked Brian, the bartender, to make us a Cucumber Martini. He did a good job muddling the cucumber into the gin: it had just the right amount of sweetness to pair with our meal:
The spicy tuna tartare came with tempura fried shiso leaves to use as the vehicle for the fish. It was a an interesting tasty take of the spicy tuna:
Brian highly recommended the Tokyo Garlic Shrimp served with with chile aioli, tobiko, panko and tsume sauce (sweet rice wine and soy sauce usually used for eel preparations). We had no regrets at all in ordering this dish:
The miso-marinated black cod with tsukemono (pickled) cucumbers is their most popular dish on the menu. The fish was flaky and slightly sweet from the miso marinade:
It had been awhile since we had soft shell crab. Not really local nor in season, it didn’t deter us from ordering the Spider roll:
Tokyo GoGo has a daily Happy Hour offering low prices on select drinks, beer and hand-rolled sushi. It’s a great environment to sit at the bar and share a few bites to eat.
July, 2013 Update: Tokyo GoGo is now closed.
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