Read a few highly recommended post for this place, so I decided to check it out myself. I just came back from Tenichi for lunch, spent $40.00 with only myself. Here is what I have if I remember everything: Tuna, Yellow Tail, Spice Tuna roll, 2 Mirugai (giant clamp), Amaebi (raw shrimp), Haribut, tea and a large sake. About freshness, they are overall good, raw shrimp happens to be the best of all today. Large in size and fresh (most other place will charge $6.50 for that size while they only charge $4.50). Mirugai is the second best in the freshness competition. The Haribut is okay. The Yellow tail and tuna is in the poor spectrum of the scale. Cutting technique and presentation style - Poor. Period. End of discussion. The cutting style and technique is simple not at the top class sushi chef level, fish is long and slim. The rice shape is not a good sushi rice shape, hard to describe, just doesn't look good. Rice is not compact and fish doesn't stay, they all fell apart badly. How about if I say it doesn't looks like those in the picture, more like half of it ! The shrimp head is under fry, not completely crisp. It's all allright. Halibut doesn't top with green onion and giner instead they use the leaf (sorry forgot what it's call, that heavily scent leaf, typical use on ika - squid instead). Also does not use that soy source vinegar mixture. The place is present, fine contempoary pop music, small in size which is nice. Clean and lots of different brand of sake to offer. Micheal is a nice person, need more training 8-) unless he is doing some sort of an experiment today ! Price is at the expensive side which is fine with me if it offers that level of performance. They have other stuffs too, lunch special and Udon, I might try those some other time. So, todays conclusion is I think Tenichi is not an excellent sushi restaurant. It's allright if you like to go there, I probably will not have any more sushi from there again. The closest one around the area & is a whole lot better (I mean sushi only which is heavily overpriced too) is Fuki Sushi in Palo Alto or Los Alto whatever it really belongs to. I was there only 1 time and only had sushi and also spent about $40 for lunch myself. The rest of their food, I don't know. Fuki has much better sushi. Ikenohana in Cupertino is just a par under then Fuki which is good too. So far, my #1 favorite sushi restaurant is still the one in West LosAngeles, Heidi in Sawtell. They are the best in California ! Those of you read this and like sushi and live in L.A., go check them out. Prepare a 30min to 1 hour wait depends on your arrival time and cash only transaction. This place is nothing elagant or comfortable, they do regualar customers business mostly and doesn't offer a lot of services or whatever. This scares away a lot of new customers and those who throught of a business lunch or dinner date. Too bad I had moved 8-( There might be better one in San Fran downtown, I always want to try that place in Sheraton Hotel but they might be super over price and way too fancy and tailor for the tourist for my taste. Good sushi is hard to fine.
San Francisco Bay Area, CA