Rintaro is an izakaya in the Mission. The menus are short and flexible to take advantage of the best of the season. We use super fresh California fish, heirloom vegetables and the great meats available here. We’ve painstakingly developed relationships with individual farmers who grow specialized Japanese vegetables and fisherman who can delivery fish as pristine as what we used in Japan. We’ve dug bamboo shoots in Livermore, picked ume plums in Winters, get soy milk from America’s best Tofu maker Gardena and fresh wasabi root from Half Moon Bay. We import whole katsuobushi from a generations-old factory in Kagoshima, kombu from Hokkaido, handmade soy sauce from Kyoto, etc. And we make everything from scratch: udon, umeshu, umeboshi and tofu.

Our hope with Rintaro is to translate the experience of a Tokyo izakaya to San Francisco. We want the restaurant to be comfortable and fun and fresh. It should be a place with exciting but simple food that tastes both like Japan and Cali- fornia.