Sakae Restaurant

A (not so) hidden gem in downtown Burlingame. The sushi here is top top notch, rivaling even the best sushi found in San Francisco, for a fraction of the price. Every fish in my Chirashi was fresh and excellent, and our side dishes were as well. Marinated baby octopus, suonomo salad, fresh wasabi, perfectly seasoned hirame. 10/10 will be visiting again.

We saw that this restaurant had 4 stars on Yelp, so we thought we'd give it a shot. Unfortunately, I found the food to be really average, the service to be a bit distracted, and, as a result, the prices to be much too high for what you get. My wife ordered the $120 omakase. Half the fish were tasty and fresh. But the other half were really meh. I tried the fatty Toro and it was fibrous, a bit mushy, and had a subtle fishy taste that you don't get with super fresh fish. I went a la carte. The hotate yaki was okay. A bit oversauced. The shrimp tempura was a bit too doughy and could have been much crisper. The hot tuna roll was good, but not worth the $14 price tag. Overall, decent sushi, but you can find much better sushi for the same price elsewhere.