Wakuriya

About Wakuriya

Five tables, a short counter, and one chef at the board: Katsuhiro Yamasaki has cooked nearly every plate at Wakuriya himself since 2009, while his wife Mayumi runs the room. The restaurant sits in a strip mall at 115 De Anza Boulevard in San Mateo and holds the only Michelin star in the city. The format is kaiseki (seasonal multi-course Japanese), rewritten monthly, nine courses for $165, with ingredients flown in from Japan alongside California produce. There is no à la carte; you eat the progression Yamasaki has set for that month, ending on something like a peach crème brûlée.

The Kitchen

Yamasaki trained in Japan and opened Wakuriya with Mayumi in 2009, and the kitchen has held its Michelin star as the lone starred restaurant in San Mateo. He works alone behind the counter, which is the whole pitch: one palate, one pair of hands, a menu that changes every month so regulars never repeat a meal. A typical progression opens with a chilled hiyashi chawan-mushi (savoury egg custard) topped with shrimp, moves through an assorted appetiser plate, a steamed course, a hot dish, and a palate cleanser before a choice of broiled fish and a dessert such as peach crème brûlée or a chocolate rice cake.

The rice and the dashi are the tells. Yamasaki sources carefully and treats the nine courses as one arc rather than nine separate dishes, which is what the kaiseki tradition asks and what most counters in the price band miss. At $165 for the full menu it undercuts every comparable tasting room in San Francisco, including Benu, several times over. For more of the region's counters see the best Japanese restaurants worldwide and our tasting-menu guide.

The Room

Wakuriya is small and plain in the way serious counters often are: a low-key strip-mall room with about sixteen seats across five tables and a short bar, lit evenly and quietly enough that the kitchen sets the pace. Conversation is easy because the room is calm and the tables are not stacked on each other, though the two-seating structure means your table has a clock on it. Dress is smart casual; this is the suburbs, not the city, and nobody is checking for a jacket. Mayumi Yamasaki runs the floor solo, so service is warm but unhurried, and courses arrive when the kitchen is ready, not before.