I was down at Kokko, my favorite yakitori-ya in San Mateo the other day, and I noticed the restaurant next door was still open. We went to Kokko anyway, but my mother noticed that Usagi’s sign says “yoshoku-ya” so we needed to look that up.
Yoshoku is what, in japan, passes for Western food. While that means Curry plate, it apparently also means linguini and hamburger-steaks and a variety of other dishes. It is typified by what’s served by Denny’s in Japan.
While we have a few curry joints now, this intrigues me, and I wonder if anyone’s been to Usagi, or knows of other examples of yoshoku in the bay area.
I haven’t been to Usagi, but On the Bridge in SF Japantown also serves yoshoku. They have stuff like Japanese curry and hamburg steak. I’ve only had the mentaiko spaghetti there, which is spaghetti with spicy salted cod roe, and it wasn’t particularly memorable.
For just Japanese curry I like Muracci’s in the FiDi, SF, and the Japacurry truck, though I haven’t been to either in awhile.
I had dinner there around a year ago and enjoyed the mentaiko spaghetti and the hamburger steak a lot. I had thought Namu’s omurice was good until eating Usagi’s, in which the fluffy egg transitioned seamlessly with the rice. I joined Melanie Wong there and she has a more thorough description of the meal.
Usagi’s chef puts effort into the dishes, both in terms of ingredients and technique. I have to say, I was initially skeptical – – I’ve never found the food at Japantown’s On the bridge particularly good and Japanese curry hasn’t won me over elsewhere. Westernized Chinese food hasn’t appealed to me much either— the places I’ve had it in California use few fresh ingredients and I lack the cultural reference to appreciate their dishes in the way I treat Kraft Mac and Cheese as comfort food.
