Sushi is a food group that tends to increase in price proportionally with quality - at least in this city. I’m sure in Japan you can get incredible uni for relatively cheap in an alleyway, but we are not in a Japanese alleyway.

Akiko’s Restaurant, a small and understatedly upscale sushi spot between Union Square and the Financial District is a place where you can eat amazing fish and drink top-shelf sake provided you are OK with paying up for it. It's the kind of place that has two-year-aged soy sauce - no Kikkoman up in this joint. And besides quality slices of sashimi, they have some crazy sh*t going off on the menu. Turns out, monkfish have delicious livers. We ate a baby barracuda and didn’t even feel bad about it.

The restaurant itself is unassuming from the outside, lacking any noticeable signage, and welcomes you inside with a long narrow bar, wooden tables, and chopsticks in a slightly industrial space with half the room covered in fancy wallpaper and half outfitted with exposed bricks and pipes. Service is attentive, with excellent recommendations and a good cadence of dish delivery.

Also pro tip: do not accidentally go to Akiko’s Sushi - a standard sushi joint a few blocks away. Rookie mistake. On our most recent visit to Akiko’s Restaurant (431 Bush Street - remember this to shout repeatedly at your Uber driver and or/yourself to get you to the right spot) we used up an Open Table gift card we’d been sitting on to splurge on the omakase, which runs $100 a person. It was well worth it. The omakase dining experience is leisurely and full of surprises, and at Akiko’s they know how to reel you in for next time: finish your offering with wagyu beef topped with a dab of truffles. I’m sold, it’s over, I will now run the streets of San Francisco declaring the glory and power of this piece of meat.