Let's Talk Food: Izakaya Sozai (3.5/5)

Some people eat to live, and some live to eat. For me... well, I do a bit of both. On “my jeans don’t fit oh god why am I such a glutton?!” days, It wouldn’t be at all strange for me to eat just to live. Honestly, if food didn’t taste so good, I would eat only because I had to. Unfortunately, most of the time, I eat because food is tasty. It's all very unfortunate for my waistline and my wallet... mostly unfortunate for my wallet.

Today, I’m going to talk about an extremely tiny izakaya joint located in the Inner Sunset of San Francisco. The establishment is called Izakaya Souzai.

The restaurant is tiny and crowded. Extremely crowded. Some things to know:

1. They don’t take reservations after they open
2. If you want to eat there after they open, you have to go to the restaurant and tell the host your name, party, and telephone number
3. Don’t go if you have to spend your parents money or if you’re struggling to pay rent and/or your bills--that’s a bad idea all around.

That said, I’m also Chinese-American. I grew up eating homecooked Chinese food which means some things I eat are considered weird and gross by American standards. I will inevitably order “weird” meats when I’m at an izakaya joint.

Okay, Izakaya Souzai, food was good overall, as was the service. I can’t really complain about how expensive it is because you know that going into an izakaya. If I were to rate it on Yelp, I’m giving it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars and here’s why:

The most amazing thing I had was the Pork Jowl; it was perfectly flavored, perfectly tender, and even typing this is making my mouth water. It came with a wedge of lemon (as did everything else to cut the charred and smokey flavor) and a miso sauce that I’m forgetting how to describe since I didn’t write down my initial impressions while eating. Do not put lemon juice on it, the flavors are perfect and lemon only killed the flavor of the meat. If you want, you can put the miso sauce on it, but don’t drown the meat in sauce as it is flavored perfectly well on its own.

The other memorable dish of the evening, nasu (eggplant). That was sweet and savory, but perfectly grilled with that “grilled” flavor. Like teriyaki without the overwhelming nature overload of sauce. Chicken hearts were also very delicious, savory, a little gamey and iron(y?). If you’re game to eat hearts, get it because it was delicious.

Chicken gizzards are one of my favorite parts of chicken. Like, I can eat drumsticks, thighs and gizzards and I’m one happy camper. The gizzards on a stick was good here. It had decent flavor, exactly the texture I wanted. It wasn’t mind blowing, but it was good. I count my blessings that it was flavorful, whereas most places just make it bland or salty. For what it was, they were above average in that regard.

Garlic Edamame was awesome. I don’t even particularly like edamame and I thought this was delicious. I usually think ordering edamame is a complete rip-off but my friend wanted to eat it so we ordered it and I did not expect to enjoy it so much. I honestly recommend this to people who usually don’t eat edamame because... well, how can you say now to garlic?

The Chicken cartilage was pretty good as long as you didn’t over salt it. It was deep fried and if it accidentally oversalted a piece and ate it anyway, a quick sip of sake made the meal perfect. Eat a piece of cartilage, followed by a sip of sake and it’s so perfect you’ll wonder why you haven’t tried that sooner.

Hot Yuzu Sake - this was tasty even if warming up the sake still didn’t hide the “not very good” aspects of the sake. I leaned towards thinking it was pretty tasty in terms of flavor. But I was also thinking that you can’t really hide not very good alcohol. But the sake made the food enjoyable so that’s good.

Okay, I think I covered all the good food that I had here. Now let’s go over the underwelming dishes we ordered.

Chicken skin.... that was really meh. It was okay, but there wasn’t much to it and there wasn’t any particular flavor to it at all. It tasted like skin and I kind of wished they either made it more crispy or they made it more flavorful or... something. It was lacking in impact.

Duck, which was their special for the evening, was also extremely underwelming. It didn’t have that gamey “Duck” flavor that I usually like for duck and the only flavor on it was that awkward plum sauce they used. Even though they used a little sauce, the fact that the duck had little to no flavor cause my tongue to only taste the sauce. They should have made the skin on the duck crispier, instead, it was just browned and not crispy.

Braised pork belly was also extremely disappointing. Perfect pork belly should be braised to the point where the fat melts in your mouth and doesn’t feel greasy. The porkbelly melted all right, but it was over cooked so that when it did melt, it was greasy and not very good. Good pork belly shouldn’t have fat lingering in your mouth after you swallow. The flavor wasn’t particularly amazing either. This was a complete miss for me.

Okay, so food wise, 2/3s of everything ordered leaned on the tasty side. Service was good so I’m giving the place a 4/5 stars.