VIBRANT, YEAH?

In these troubling times, would it lighten your mood any to see what an incredibly, perhaps ridiculously, expensive plate of Ji-Kinmedai (cold smoked golden eye snapper, from Chiba, Japan) looks like?  Well of course it would.  It looks like this:

Was it really worth what it cost?  Well very nearly, although this Ankimo – (monkfish liver - from Boston, as a matter of fact) offered rather more bang for the buck:

Both these dishes were eaten at a restaurant in San Francisco called Akiko’s, on Bush Street, which is pretty special.  One of the curious things about the menu is that it’s divided into two sections “White Fish” and “Vibrant Fish.”  But who wouldn’t go for vibrant?

You want to see a pretty decent and reasonably priced pulled pork sandwich?  Well, here’s one I ate earlier, at Café 5 in the newly refurbished San Francisco Museum of Modern Art:

Did it need to be served on a piece of wood?  Probably not.  Although it did have a little circular hole for the bowl of pickles, and actually it was the pickles that made it.  They were vibrant.