Palette Tea House

This is a great American style dim sum place.

The lobster filled dumpling along with the scallop Siu Mai are by far the best dishes. Also, would get the soft shell crab and fish (pictured below) again. The deep fried dumpling, and the soup filled dumpling, and the green dumpling below were good. I would not get the swan looking dumpling (looks good, didn’t like the taste or texture).

Finishing off with the egg tart was great. As for the drink, I didn’t care too much for it. Also, even though they served various sauces on an interesting palette plate, I also didn’t really care too much for them.

Kemuri Japanese Baru

This place was awesome for several reasons. One, it has a full bar, and two, the food was great (but not cheap).

For drinks, I ordered the Kemuri Manhattan ( I gotta say it was a bit too Smokey for my taste). My second drink, however, was amazing. It was the RWC Breeze (Vidka, April, pineapple juice). It was just the right amount of sweetness and tasted refreshing.

For the main dishes, we ordered the soft shell crab, the Kobe style beef (grill), shiitake mushrooms skewer, chicken karaage , beef tataki kale salad, and the uni paella. Everything was great except for the mushrooms (they seemed under cooked or dry).

Ryoko

I would go back to this place, although it was a bit pricey for the fact that it looked like a dive bar (food was good).

We got to Ryoko around 7:30pm, and waited 15 minutes for a table for 3 (not bad, considering an hour later the line was really long. We did notice, however, you can drink in the line while waiting. Also later on a DJ comes on, which we didn’t get to experience).

For my drink, I got an lychee Saketini. OMG. Very tasty (although Cyrene thought it was too sweet). They also have a full bar, which I would take advantage of next time.

For the food, we got soft shell crab (it was a decent sized crab), tako wakame su (basically octopus salad, which was ok, but wouldn’t order again mainly since it’s by my thing. Cyrene enjoyed it), rainbow roll (which I thought was good), and the sushi dinner (sashimi, which tasted fresh and was a good size for 2 people).

Seiya

First restaurant I’ve eaten at in San Carlos, and it was good (but not cheap).

To start, I got the Apprentice sake sampler. To be honest, I don’t think I actually noticed any difference between the three sakes (and I still like the cloudier ones better. These ones were all clear). I do like how it was presented, and the wooden cups did add to the experience (they were surprisingly light and added to the taste).

We got the sashimi salad, which is a great deal (since you get like 8 pieces of sashimi for $17, compared to an order of 8 pieces of sashimi, which costs $32).

We also tried the soft shell crab and chicken karaage (which was actually cooked just right – not too crispy. Perhaps its the batter they used that was good).

For the rolls, we got the JalapeƱo Hamachi (it’s pretty simple, and probably a California roll is even more complex), and the Great balls of fire (this one was really good. It was temperature hot and spicy. It had panko crusted spicy tuna roll with spicy mayo, unagi sauce scallions & tobiko).