Restaurant Review: Ten Restaurant- A Perfect Ten?

Sure, if it’s a scale from one to 50. The newest addition to the Inner Sunset’s list of Japanese restaurants is Ten Restaurant, occupying the space of the now defunct Mae-Thip Thai restaurant at 524 Irving St. The only way it is going to avoid the fate of its predecessor is if drastic improvements are made at this upscale Japanese restaurant. Fighting for a slice of the upscale Japanese sushi market, Ten has stiff competition from the wildly popular Ebisu and notable Koo. But it may not be much of a fight, as an anemic menu offering middling food at inflated prices may have Ten committing seppuku.

The décor of the restaurant is chic with its dark red walls highlighted by sconce lighting. The black granite floors made the room feel dramatic and expansive until you notice that the tables are actually quite close together. Anime played on mute on three televisions stacked horizontally in the corner while music by Utada Hikaru and other J-pop artists with a dance beat filled the dining area.

I expected to wait awhile since it was 7pm on a Friday night at a newly opened restaurant. However, we were seated by our friendly waitress promptly, as only a quarter of the tables were occupied, not including the backroom for larger parties (which was also unoccupied). We perused the expansive menu, which offered a wide variety of options. Appetizers ranged from $3.75 to $11.75, offering anything from the usual edamame, tofu and miso soup to oysters on half shell. Assuming that their strengths lay in fish, we chose between the Sal & Man and the spicy hamachi. The first was described as smoked salmon and mango. My pal Lucky and I were uncertain if it was lox or some other way of preparing salmon. After all, how often do you get lox at a Japanese restaurant? We asked our waitress, who had a hard time describing what it was. When I asked if it was lox, her look said, “Your guess is as good as mine.” Had I noticed that baby back ribs ($16.75) was one of the selections in the a la carte menu, I would not have questioned that lox was being served under the guise of sushi. Instead, we opted for the spicy hamachi.

For our main entrees, we had the option of choosing among donburi (rice dishes for $8.75 to $13.50), soba or udon (noodle dishes from $7.25 to $8.75), sushi ($8 to $12), or sashimi ($17 to $25). The rice and udon selections available were quite ordinary, even mundane, for such a well dressed restaurant. Unfortunately, the sushi selections weren’t much better- it took a few minutes to choose an item, not because they all sounded delectable and appetizing, but because we couldn’t decide which sounded least uninteresting. Many seemed to be California rolls topped with fish; a few others were either crab salad or spicy tuna topped with fish. We settled on the spicy tuna tempura. We couldn’t find another roll that was either different or interesting, so we decided on a simple, unadulterated plate of sashimi.

As we sat drinking our lukewarm tea (not because we had been waiting a long time, but because the tea being served was lukewarm), we overheard the neighboring table complain that one of the items ordered had not yet arrived. At this point, all we could do was cross our fingers and hope for the best. The spicy hamachi arrived first. The presentation was pretty, with red and green peppers contrasting the five pale pink pieces arranged like leaves of a petal around the centered shredded daikon in a puddle of yuzu sauce. However, even my pal Lucky, whose tolerance for spiciness is quite low, did not once reach for the tea to put out any fires in her mouth. Within a couple of minutes, we polished off the average appetizer and started on our roll. Stuffed with tempura battered shrimp, rice and spicy tuna, I was expecting a contrast of textures. Instead, the sauce that was drizzled over the top made the entire roll uniformly soft and mushy. My hopes for a decent roll were further dashed by the fact that it tasted like one homogenous roll- we couldn’t distinguish the spicy tuna from the tempura shrimp.

The one good thing about the place was that the food came out in a timely manner, at least for us. However, at a nearby table, we heard them complain that the kitchen had forgotten one of their dishes. After finishing our spicy tuna tempura roll, our sashimi moriwase came out. Pieces of ahi, hamachi, salmon, hamaguri (clam), and maguro were arranged on a platter served over ice to keep the fish cool. The pieces of fish were of decent quality- firm yet sufficiently soft. However, the sushi chef’s precision with a knife was sorely lacking as the pieces were far from uniform thickness and consistency. Even worse, the hamaguri was surprisingly fishy and did not taste fresh.

Close to forty dollars later and twenty minutes later (that must have been the fastest sushi meal we’d eaten), we were still hungry. Rather than take a chance on ordering another disappointing dish, we went home to eat the leftover chili that we had eaten earlier that day for lunch. I hope that my dining experience will be different from yours, but if I were you, I would spend my ten dollars someplace else.

Ten Restaurant

524 Irving St.

San Francisco, 94122

Open: Mon., Wed.–Fri. 11:30-2:30pm and 5-10pm

Closed Tues.

One star out of five