On a recent weekday afternoon I found myself on Fillmore amongst their many shops and restaurants and decided to give Bun Mee a try, having heard many good things about it. Sadly, the place was PACKED! I think my comment when I walked in the door was, oh hell no, or something like that. So I stood on the corner and looked around and saw this place called Glaze Teriyaki Grill. It's a new place I vaguely remember seeing mentioned in several foodie places online. In fact, this was their first day open and I thought, what better time to try a new place!
It's a decent sized place inside with tables down the left and the kitchen down the right. Plus as a bonus they have a small patio area out back for those rare sunny days in San Francisco. It is enclosed so the wind is at a minimum, but they will probably need to get heat lamps eventually. So I got in a line of 5 people at the register to order. There were 8 people in the kitchen cooking and you could tell it was a first day because it was a clusterf**k back there. I've worked opening day at 2 different restaurants so I kind of understood the confusion, it happens. Looking at the menu, it's basically rice plates with a small side salad and then you choose your meat and rice type. They have a combo plate for $10 which lets you choose any 2 meats so I went with that.
A Japanese bbq marinated hanger steak and pork loin with brown rice, a side salad and sesame dressing. As food it was good, if not spectacular. The hanger steak was nicely cooked medium rare. It was tender with a nice flavor of grill char on it, though I didn't really taste and bbq marinade on it as the teriyaki glaze sort of takes away any other flavor. Which is why I would recommend getting the glaze on the side and use it to dip so you can control how much you put on the meat. The pork, while tender, was a touch on the salty side. I'm thinking there was some kind of marinade on it but the menu didn't mention anything. The rice was cooked perfectly, it wasn't too sticky or clumpy. The salad was, eh, okay. It's a spring mix of greens with some julienned carrots tossed in. Whenever I get plates like this, the salad always seems to be some kind of afterthought like it was added to make you feel you are getting more value out of the plate. The sesame dressing was too sweet with just a touch of tang, so good enough.
Basically what we have here is a teriyaki rice plate place, kind of like the ones you find in the mall, except the food is all the buzzwords--local, sustainable, organic, all natural, etc. Or hipster rice plates as it were. Which for this part of town works fine. There really isn't another place on this strip that does this kind of thing so it is an alternative to the other choices. Is it any better than one of the mall ones? Well, that's debatable at this point. Good, yes, best teriyaki in town, not so much.
But hey, this literally was their first day. They have applied for a liquor license to sell beer so there will be that. I'm sure after customer feedback and such, what they do will evolve to a certain extent. It's probably best that if you are in the neighborhood you should drop by and try for yourself--and be sure to let them know what you think
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