Sumika - sticks of delicious

Having harnessed the power of Yelp!,  I am able to locate, with reasonable certainty, good food wherever I travel.  I had to go to Silicon Valley for a deposition and was rewarded by taking the advice of Yelp!ers and visited Sumika, a yakitori place in Los Altos, CA.  

First, let me say I, being from Wyoming, did not realize how plentiful Asian pacific people are in the bay area.  I should have known, it is certainly logical, but the full scope of how many Asians, particularly Japanese, are in California did not sink in until this last trip.  

You see, when I went to Sumika, I arrived late, at 9:00 pm.  I entered and the small restaurant was full of Japanese people.  The background chatter was in Japanese.  The picture below is a jazz combo, complete with the other white guy who was there, singing jazz classics with a Japanese accent.  I was no longer in America, I was somewhere else, entirely.  Side note-I snapped this picture with my phone, trying to be surreptitious about it.  The irony of trying to be subtle while taking a tourist picture in a restaurant full of Japanese only hit me later.

So, yakitori.  It's Japanese skewers.  The servings are small and each of the things I am showing you here were between $3 and $5 per stick.  The grill is wide, if you are standing in front of it.  This restaurant's grill was about 8 feet wide, and only about six inches deep (about the depth of the skewers).  The menu told me that this was a sister restaurant to one in Japan, where Sumika's chef had trained.  After the meal, as the restaurant was about to close, the chef began taking charcoal out of the grill and putting into little pots.  I asked him about it and he said that the charcoal was ordered special from Japan.  He also bowed to me about 50 times during my visit.  I assume that was authentic.

 
Above, is one of the scallops (I had already eaten the other two) and the Kobe beef skewer with apple onion sauce.  Both were delicious.  However, having now had Kobe beef, I wonder what all the fuss is about.  The apple onion sauce was like applesauce, but a bit more savory.  Nonetheless, the skewers were delicious and perfectly cooked.
Above is a skewer of chicken thighs.  It was supposed to be chicken thigh with spicy sauce, but the chef (he had probably only bowed to me about 8 times at this point) forgot.  But, before I could eat any, he noticed his mistake (my table was at the "bar", looking right into the grill).  
But, after he remembered he fixed it, see above.  It was AMAZING.  The sauce was truly spicy, not sweet, but smooth.  Great flavor.  The chicken was juicy, delicious and had great texture.  I wanted to eat another twenty.  I wanted to bow 50 or so times to my chef.
Finally, I had the pork cheeks (tontoro).  I was hesitant.  I am no Andrew Zimmerman (see here), but felt like I would have wasted the opportunity if I only at "safe" stuff like chicken and beef.  Plus, since I wasn't paying for it, I could afford the risk.  Well, I LOVED IT.  It was the porkiest tasting pork ever.  So flavorful,  slightly crispy.  It was the most flavorful and juicy pork I had ever eaten.  The meat was very fatty, but not hard to chew - that is, it just tasted like delicious pork.  My risk paid off in spades.

While I was there, there was a drunk Japanese guy next to me (that's his hand in the first pic).  After the jazz combo was done, he started talking to me.  He was a bonsai gardener, who complained about how people weren't replanting the bonsai trees after they died (apparently their lifespan is about 80 years).  He complained that, instead, people were just cutting them down and hiring Mexican gardeners.  It was weird to be speaking to an obvious immigrant (he had a strong Japanese accent), in my home country but to feel like a visitor.  It was fun, and I can't wait to get another opportunity to eat at Sumika again sometime.