The Japanese restaurants of Silicon Valley are one of the area's greatest culinary virtues. There are dozens of great sushi restaurants, of course, but also ramen houses, grills, fusion restaurants, izakaya restaurants and even a rarefied kaiseki restaurant.
Santa Clara's Hatcho restaurant offers a little bit of everything. Restaurants that strive to be a jack-of-all-trades often end up being masters of none, but Hatcho displays a wide range of talent. The restaurant's chef, Kaoru Kuroki, has been licensed by the Japanese government for the authenticity of his cooking.
While the sushi I tried was good (if you want to feed a crowd, go for the hulking, $15 dragon roll), the rest of the menu is more interesting. The lunch menu is a real bargain. Hatcho combination "A" is a bento box of expertly grilled salmon, teriyaki chicken yakitori and vegetable tempura, all for $7.80. The pork cutlet lunch ($7.50), often dry and overbattered elsewhere, is juicy and light here. And be sure to order some excellent pork gyoza ($4). They're fried a crunchy brown on one side and left soft and chewy on the other.
The restaurant has a solid list of premium sake. It's too bad that few of the selections are available by the glass. With bottles ranging from $50 to $100, I doubt many people order any. In addition to smaller serving sizes, better descriptions of the rice wine would help sell more of it.
The dinner menu really lets you sample Japanese food in all its diverse deliciousness. While I was tempted to go for the multicourse kaiseki dinner ($50 per person), I decided to mix and match from the regular menu. (A kaiseki meal is an artfully prepared dinner that celebrates the seasons with the choice of ingredients and their presentation.) We started off with an order of octopus and cucumber in vinegar sauce ($5.50). Called a soup, the chilled dish features thin slices of meaty, tender octopus and sliced cucumber in a light, vinegar-spiked soy sauce.
It was a cold night, and udon noodles in a clay pot (nabe yaki, $7) was just the thing to take the chill off. The fat noodles commingled with fish cakes, tiny enoki mushrooms and spinach in a refreshing, miso-based broth. Grilled fish is a solid choice here. Black cod ($10) is so naturally fatty and rich that it needs little else, and here the generous fillet was just brushed with a little soy sauce glaze.
The best dish of the night was the matsutake mushroom soup (dobin mushi, $12). While it took the longest to prepare, it was worth the wait. This seasonal dish features matsutake mushrooms, a piney-flavored wild mushroom that's revered in Japan for its great flavor and as a symbol of fertility and wealth. Bamboo shoots, shrimp, fish, carrots, spinach and other ingredients were steeped in a broth along with the mushrooms, and the results were great. The broth had an earthy yet light flavor that was as delicious as it was nourishing. It's a cold-weather delicacy you're not likely to find elsewhere.
The dish was enhanced by its presentation. It's served in a tiny teapot along with tiny, silver-dollar-size bowls and a lemon wedge. You pour the broth into the bowls and squeeze a few drops of lemon juice into it. When the broth is gone, you eat the contents of the teapot.
The one dish that bombed was the fried burdock root with squid legs ($6.50). The burdock and squid were covered in a pasty, thick tempura batter, and making matters worse, the squid was tough and chewy.
The Japanese-style hamburger ($7.50) is comfort food in any language. The moist, meaty patty of beef is halfway between a burger and meatloaf and served with a side of spaghettilike noodles that are anointed in the same, catsup-meets-teriyaki-sauce glaze that enlivens the meat. The crispy fried egg on top elevates the protein punch of the dish.
As the table and our bellies started to fill up, an order of Japanese pickles ($4) ended the meal on a light note. Pickles aid digestion, and the combination of vinegar-steeped carrots, purple-tinted Japanese eggplant and bright yellow burdock root helped lighten the load.
At 20 years old, the restaurant is showing signs of age. The organization of the menu is a bit disjointed with its add-ons and Post-It notes. The lobby is disheveled with Japanese magazines, a random chair and a SCU women's basketball schedule posted on the wall. The lobster tank could use a good scrubbing. But once you take a step deeper into the restaurant the scenery improves. There are several tatami rooms for private dining, a long sushi bar and a regular dining room. Our waitress doted over us like a grandmother, making sure we got enough to eat and urging us to clean our plates. When I asked her what Hatcho means I confess I didn't understand the answer. Something about a pyramid, eight cities and a lucky number. Whatever it means, the restaurant does the land of the rising sun proud.
