Offbeat Eats

After finishing up dinner at Kokko, all of the gnoshing on yakitori left us still a little hungry, and we decided that some ramen was in order. Luckily, San Mateo and the adjacent communities have no shortage of ramen joints; over a dozen of them in San Mateo alone. In fact, three of them are their own little empire, owned by Kazunori Kobayashi, a Japanese Chef who first started Santa Ramen, serving classic ramen. Then he opened Ramen Dojo, focusing on spicy, stamina-building ramen. And then he open Ramen Parlor as an option to serve up some alternative ramen with different ingredients, particularly seafood. Overall, I was probably most interested in Ramen Dojo, but that wasn’t in the cards: Ramen Dojo wasn’t open that night. So we wandered over to Ramen Parlor to check it out.

On my last trip to San Mateo, I met up with my former coworker Larry and his wife Yoko who took me out to for Yakitori. I’ve always loved the concept of Yakitori. Literally meaning “grilled chicken”, the concept started as street food (with fresh skewers of grilled chicken served up with a sauce), but, especially in the US, “yakitori” has grown to include a rather large variety of grilled meats and vegetables, usually served in a sit-down restaurant with a variety of Japanese sides. San Mateo has several well-regarded Yakitori places, and my hosts decided to take me out to try Kokko.