Gochi and Food TV

Gochi, Cupertino

I've been to Gochi a couple of times for lunch, but never for dinner--and while its salmon rice bowl (flaked salmon, salmon sashimi, and salmon roe) is one of my favorite meals, tonight's dinner was a great showcase of Gochi's abilities.

Dishes Nate and I ordered:

• Yuzu ceviche - seafood of the day in yuzu ceviche, served with homemade chips that looked like Ruffles but were lighter, crispier, and with darker potato flavor. Yuzu has a taste between kumquat and lime, and is pleasantly fragrant without much acidity. It balanced cuts of octopus, salmon, and other white fish well.
• Aigamo steak - duck steak. Roasted medium, sliced, with tangy soy sauce. This one took the kitchen an hour to make--I'm not sure if it's because they missed it on our initial order, or because there was a special preparation. This would have been best 2nd in serving order.
• Saba oshi sushi - pressed sushi with marinated mackerel, shiso, and umeboshi paste, cut into sushi portions. Tasty. I love well-done mackerel, and it marriages the shiso and umeboshi much better than the usual roll with only those two ingredients.
• Sake oyako meshi - Salmon and salmon roe over rice and wilted spinach in a claypot. The heated claypot makes the rice crispy (a rice form we Chinese people call guoba, but I'm not sure what English or Japanese names are). I love claypots. We ordered a medium, though Nate and I could have finished it ourselves... I wonder if I can imitate the same dish if I heat up my Le Creuset?
  

Things I got to eat from friends at the table:

• Shiromaguro tataki - seared albacore with Japanese pea sprouts and toasted sliced garlic. The toasted garlic was a surprise. A strong element to a tame dish.
  
• Risotto croquette - mushroom risotto croquette with cheese, served with tomato and basil sauce. Crunchy outshell and creamy and delicate inside.
• Mentai kinoko pizza - Mentaiko (spicy cod roe), kinoko mushrooms, crab. The concept is good, but truthfully, this was my least favorite of the meal, only because they pilled on so many delicious ingredients and none of them got highlighted as a result, and it just tasted like cheese over something. Although, this wins over regular Japanese pizza any day.
• Mentaiko potato gratin - Mentaiko shone in this one, and its taste merged with potato and cream very well. I always want to buy mentaiko in grocery stores but never buy it because I don't know how to cook it, and this was an idea.
  

I'm not so good at the picture-taking before eating immediately when the plate comes to the table, so here's the only picture that isn't of scraps on a plate:



Some areas of the menu were not ordered--noodles, nabe, and soup. Overall, the food was inventive, though some fusions were better than others. I still love traditional Japanese food the best but would totally come back to Gochi again.

Then the rest of the night was off to Ryo's apartment for desserts (dipped strawberries, ladyfingers from our last chocolate fondue gathering, and a horrible gluten-free chocolate torte I should not have picked up at Trader Joe's) and mixed drinks (see our antics here). We watched How I Met Your Mother and Top Chef and then I drooled over Iron Chef America: Battle Coffee. The challenger had great presentation with edible flowers and leaves, and everything looked so great.