Gold Dig #47

Shibumi is a Japanese restaurant whose menu is driven by local, organic, sustainable ingredients. It is located downtown, with a sign for the parking garage but not the restaurant itself, so look out for the uniquely shaped window. That tinted window lets in the only natural light in the place, so it’s pretty dark inside (thus the less-than-stellar pictures). It’s a fairly small space, with a long bar made from a 400-year old cypress tree and some small tables which I think are made from the same tree. At #2 on Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list in 2016, Shibumi was the highest ranked Gold Dig I’ve done so far, so I was super excited for it!

The Dish

Shibumi is not the kind of Japanese restaurant that serves sushi. The food is mostly cooked, and there’s a fairly heavy emphasis on vegetables. It is praised for the meticulous preparation of the dishes. Though I have to admit that while the precision was apparent, it also felt like this led to the quantities being unnecessarily tiny. We went away feeling a bit hungry, and therefore not totally sold on Shibumi’s #2 ranking.

Chinmi, Rare Taste

Chinmi means rare taste or delicacy. In this case, it was fermented spot prawn, which you spread on a thinly shaved rectangle of daikon with a bit of fermented roe, and then follow with a sip of sake. The spot prawn had a nice salty funkiness that went well with the sake, but as you can see relative to the sake cups it was a minuscule portion. It didn’t deliver the deeply impactful flavor experience I would have needed to live up to the tiny bite.

Fresh Seaweed Shot with Grapes

Served in a small cup, this was another single-bite dish. Which I wouldn’t mind if that bite was so incredible that you could just savor the wonder of that bite lingering on your tongue. But this was fairly unremarkable – it tasted pretty much how you would imagine seaweed with grapes would.

Salmon Trout

Everyone talks about the Salmon Trout, so of course we had to try it. The flesh of the fish is beautifully silky and has a lovely smoked flavor from the smoking with wild cherry bark. I loved it with the crisp pieces of what reminded me of the shrimp chips we always have at Chinese New Year. Tasty, though again I wanted more.

Free Range Chicken

I rarely order chicken, but my dinner mate wanted to try it, so we got the Free Range Chicken served with wild mushroom in egg yolk sauce. Good call on his part, as this dish actually turned out to be my favorite of the meal. I adored the delicately tender chicken in the creamy sauce, and the mushrooms added a nice pop of texture and woodiness.

Pork Jowl, Pickled Vegetable California Rice

This was a basic bowl of rice, with some pork that didn’t blow me away, and the tiniest portion of pickled vegetable. Not only was the pork somewhat less than exciting, but there wasn’t near enough of it for the quantity of rice. Luckily, I was able to spoon the wonderful sauce from the chicken onto the remainder of my rice, which I quite enjoyed.