Food is one of our core focuses here at Japadamus.  Restaurant reviews, in particular, are one of the reasons we started this site in the first place.

One of they problems I’ve noticed with online reviews, however, is methodology.  You have various systems of stars and letter grades representing such a broad range of criteria that it’s really hard to make an apples to apples comparison of restaurants.

What I would like to do here is to define some sort of standardized reviewing methodology for this site.  Hopefully this will make our reviews more useful for readers.

We also have three different authors for Japadamus, so ideally you will get to see the likes and dislikes of individual authors, providing additional review fidelity.

We use a grade-based reviewing system, because dealing with little clip art stars is annoying.  There are four aspects of each restaurant that we will judge individually, and we will also provide an ‘overall’ grade for each restaurant we review.

-Food:  This category will judge the quality of food.  Simple as that.  We’ll try to provide lots of detail here, since this is probably an important part of the review for most readers.  At the same time, this is a highly subjective category, so get to know the likes/dislikes of your posters!

-Selection:  This category will rate the selection of items offered by a restaurant.  The importance of ’selection’ will vary depending on the restaurant - selection is probably more important at say, a sushi restaurant than a french place with a fixed menu.

-Service:  Service is very subjective.  On one hand, basic things like refilling water, food timing and menu knowledge are required for a ‘C’ grade.  But servers must really be willing to go out of their way to make you happy in order to get a superior grade for service.

-Ambience:  More important for some occasions than others, we will rate ambience, but depending on the restaurant, ambience may not play a big role in the ‘overall’ score.  For example, a below average ambience score may not be a huge deal in a basic, home-style restaurant, but it will be more important in a chic trendy place.

-Overall:  We don’t establish a weighing system to come up with the overall grade, since different criteria impact the overall impression of individual restaurants differently.  Also, the value of a meal impacts the overall score - and when I say ‘value’ that means price comes into play here.  Just think of the ‘overall’ grade as what we feel when we’re walking out the door.

Hopefully this grading methodology will provide you readers with a better understanding of how we feel about the restaurants we write about.  As always, feel free to comment if you have questions.

Tekka is a tiny Japanese restaurant in the Richmond district of SF.  The definition of ‘hole in the wall,’ Tekka has only about 8 seats at the bar and another 3 seats on a single table.  The restaurant is decorated with a bunch of japanese trinkets, and a bunch of customer notes and art.

The first time you enter Tekka, read the rules that are posted on the front window.  These include cash only (important to note because the nearest ATM is a few blocks away), no reservations, no tempura or teriyaki, no complaining, no rush service, no weekends, no forks, no soda,  and ‘come back after 9:30′ (only 8 seats, remember).  Also keep in mind that there is a minimum bill of $18 - so come ready to eat.

Restaurants with posted rules always seem pretentious to me, reminiscent of Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi.  With that in mind, I was surprised to see that Tekka’s sushi chef was a friendly old man, very short and almost comical in appearance.  The restaurant’s only other employee was his wife, a polite, friendly woman.

Interestingly, Tekka has no menu.  There is a sushi whiteboard with a surprisingly small selection of items and fresh vegetables are displayed on the right side of the bar.  On the night we went, asparagus, shitake mushrooms and shishito (japanese peppers) were displayed.

We asked the waitress about kitchen items, and she offered several ways of preparing the fresh veggies.  We decided on grilled shishito.  We also ordered an agedashi nasu (eggplant) per her suggestion.

The sushi at Tekka is huge.  This is the first japanese restaurant I have ever gone to where I needed to bites to eat a nigiri.  The pieces of fish were rich slabs of meat that nearly completely covered the rice underneath.

This speaks to the chef’s technique.  He is unconventional to say the least - although he did sip sake throughout the nite so perhaps his concept of food cost control was thrown off by a lack of oxygen.  Besides the large slabs of fish, he also formed the rice ball rather unconventionally, using quick finger grabs and pinches rather than the more elegant technique of traditional sushi chefs.

To his credit however, it didn’t seem to matter.  More fish, less style was fine with me.  Particularly since the hamachi was fresh and buttery, the tuna was a bright dark red (that may sound funny, but that’s what you’re looking for really) and the huge scallop was tender and surprisingly flavorful.

The kitchen items were good, but very basic.  The shishito were grilled with salt and the nasu was served in pieces with a moderately think sweet agedashi sauce.  The hamachi kama was a bit small, but perfectly cooked with juicy meat neatly flaking off the cheek bone.

One thing that must be mentioned is that food is only part of the Tekka experience.  A big part of the restaurant’s appeal is the environment.  It is a laid back, friendly place where diners talk to each other, and share food.  The chef does a good job of interacting with his customers, and from what I could tell, they really like the guy as well - I mean, they all seemed to know him, actually.  This is clear from not only the customers that are eating there, but by the hunderds of little notes and pieces of art from customers that adorn the walls and sushi bar.

And that’s something unique nowadays.  While some sushi places represent traditional japanese culture with large menus and extensive selections of fish, Tekka takes a different route.  It does an excellent job of reproducing the small, neighborhood feeling of a rural sushi restaurant - and surprisingly they have also recreated the jovial atmosphere of this type of place as well.

As for the grading:

Food:  B+  Generous portions, but not very much in terms of creativity.  Most kitchen items very basic.

Selection:  D  They had the smallest selection of any sushi restaurant I’ve ever been too.  However, it does seem that their selection varies throughout the week, and we happened to come late on friday when much of the menu was already gone perhaps.

Service:  A-  Extra points for customer interaction.  Be nice though, I think the waitress does have a mean streak in her.

Ambience:  C  Basic hole in the wall.  Clean, but old.  One thing I must note, throughout the nite the sushi chef plays DVDs of music concerts.  The selection that night - the Bee Gees and Neil Diamond.  No kidding.

Overall:  B+  I like the generous portions and the overall environment.  It’s a chill place to eat - a perfect neighborhood hideaway.  Not the best in the city and a poor selection of fish, but a place I would have no problems going to any night of the week.

Tekka Japanese Restaurant

Neighborhood: Inner Richmond
537 Balboa Street
(between 6th Ave & 7th Ave)
San Francisco, CA 94118 (415) 221-8455

(note pictures are from Flickr)

NY Times ran an article confirming a Google Phone project in the works.  With iphone on the horizon for a launch in June, this new mobile phone entrant is going to have to be really good to get any love….Unless they make it free! 

I’ve always pondered the question: What is the best Spam Musubi construction?  On its face this question might not seem complicated but take a second and think of all the permutations you’ve seen spam musubi prepared. 

Where do you put the spam?  On Top?  In between two layers of rice like a sandwich?

What about Sauce? Do you put a sauce on the musubi or not? 

What about Nori, thick or thin wrapper?

What about extras like egg or furikake?

What about storage, saran wrap only? 

Here’s a basic recipe from the Honolulu Star Bulletin:

Pan Spam Musubi

2 cans Spam, cubed
4 cups rice, cooked
4 sheets nori
Furikake
» Sauce:
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons mirin

Combine sauce ingredients and stir to dissolve sugar.

Fry Spam until browned. Add sauce to pan and simmer until liquid is absorbed.

Place two nori squares in bottom of a 9-by-13-inch pan. Top with half the rice and press down to make an even layer. Sprinkle furikake over rice, then top with the Spam. Spread remaining rice over Spam and press down. Sprinkle with furikake and top with 2 more nori sheets. Cut into rectangles.

This month’s Woot! Off ended on Friday with no Bag of Crap.  Instead, they ended the Woot! Off with the screaming monkey with Woot! cape.  If that made no sense to you at all, read up here.

Overall, the Woot! Off was slightly better than previous one for the most part.  However, the lack of a BOC is really always kind of a downer.

One of the most interesting items was a 2 pack of “G Sake,” which claims to be “America’s most honored sake.”  Produced by Sake One, a company I’ve never heard of, the G Sake bottle reminds me more of a cologne than a drink, but looks pretty slick nonetheless.

They also sold a water scooter, which propels you around in the water - kind of cool.  The logitech digital pen, which lets you write on regular paper, and translates this data instantly to a PC file, was kind of neat, and a good deal at $30.

Actually, there was a lot of logitech stuff - several keyboards here and there as well as a web cam.  The keyboards were actually pretty neat this time and I picked one up.

Other than that, there was a lot of the old crap - projectors which I never see anyone use, a bunch of Roombas, tons of graphics cards, a handful of digital cameras and lots of hard drives and memory cards.

Not the worst Woot! Off ever, but not that great either.

Business 2.0’s Apple blog had an interesting article about another “potential” Apple design problem for the iphone.  They reported that early beta users have commented on the relative slipperiness of the overall device which may make it more prone to dropping.  With a $500 price tag, this may worry some users (and parents) that you might see your fortunes stylishly bouncing on the ground.

The article did clear up one previous rumor which Japadamus.com reported on earlier, the iphone battery life.  The same beta testers quoted about the slipperiness issue, also commented that the phone lasted longer than 5 hours on talk mode, and over 14 hours on listening/music playing mode.  Wow, that’s pretty good!

Mo nerdy = Mo funny

With this latest news of Stephen Hawking flying in zero-gravity, it makes me think more about this unusual man.  First, Hawking is a genius hands down, his ability to understand physics, space and time is amazing.  I’m probably not even 1% as smart.  Second, he’s divorced, not once but twice!  Imagine living your life in a wheelchair, unable to speak without using a computer, then you have to tell your wife, “Its over.”  Seriously, WTF!?! how bad is that wife to be dumped by a millionaire, paralyzed physicist.  I guess he’s a love’em and leave’ em type of guy.  What lessons can we learn from Hawking?  well, we learn that blackholes exists and that everyone should get a prenup.

From Gizmodo.  Koreans like things fresh apparently - very very fresh.  Here are a couple videos from South Korean restaurants that serve octopus tentacles that are so fresh they are writhing around!

Mike Penner, a 23 year veteran sports columnist for LA Times announced in his column today that he will be undergoing a sex change to become “Christine Daniels.”  Mike revealed to his readers the arduous journey he traveled which led him to the realization that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body.  Mike, who is also married had began the “coming-out” process several months ago with the people close to him.  I wonder how his male readers will feel about his sports opinions now?

Monday’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart featured a long interview with republican presidential candidate John McCain.

They get pretty snippy at times, and a lot of the interview they are just talking over each other.  Stewart does a good job of breaking down McCain’s logic, but at the same time you can tell that Stewart has some respect for McCain for having the balls to show up.  I agree actually, it’s a tough crowd for McCain and you got to give him props for appearing.

Stewart is a pretty good debater I suppose, but I’m not sure if I like his bemused, narrative style all the time.

Here’s the vid, tell us what you think!

From Drudge.  I’m not going to lie to you, I like Hugh Grant a lot.  What I like best is the two Hugh Grant personalities.  On one hand, you have the lovable, charming romantic comedy Hugh Grant that you see in movies like…well, every movie he’s ever done pretty much.  And on the other, you have the arrested for soliciting a black prostitute Hugh Grant, looking disheveled and generally creepy in mug shots.

Following the release of Music and Lyrics, the lovable Hugh Grant let its other half take over for a bit.  This time, we see the baked beans-throwing, reporter kicking Hugh Grant.

I have to say, judging from his form, the angry Hugh Grant kicks a lot like a girl.  Maybe that’s a carryover from his other personality.

The Nene goose is a darling of the Hawaii media, any time something happens Nene related, The Starbulletin is there to cover it.  Check out the results for this search, 181 mentions of Nene on Starbulletin.com?  Give me a break, who cares about these birds.  The just strut around Hawaii, telling people what to do.  I’m writing a letter to the editor in support of a blackout on all Nene related news, its too much.