Barracuda Japanese Restaurant

What a horrible person I am to not have reviewed this place years ago. I’ll never forget how fresh each piece of fish from our 20+ fish sashimi platter from the chef, I gotta be honest it was WAY TOO LOUD in here ALL the damn time but whatever. The uni shooter with the raw quail egg and sake and yummy soy saucey deliciousness with the freshest pieces of uni. This place had it all. Great food and great service is what gets the 5-​star. And I’m sure most of their clientele enjoyed the loud music since it was also a bar. I dined in with friends when we got ‘insider info’ from an employee on their last shipment of fish. Hah. I will miss this place as it was my sushi go-​to whenever in SF.
I hate myself for not leaving this review a few years ago. Oh well

No longer exists

Farewell Barracuda. I feel like I kinda knew you, but not completely, having been here for dinner, happy hour, all-​you-​can-​eat lunch, but not the bottomless mimosa brunch that folks reference the most.
Walked by last night and was surprised to see the windows covered up. The official word from the FB/​twitter update is that they’re closed the rest of January as they work on a new concept. Didn’t expect that considering I was just here for lunch the first Friday of 2015. Perhaps the writing was on the wall. They were understaffed but the service was as cordial as always. They apologized for the delays as they scurried to fulfill the many orders. True troopers.
I’ve always had a good experience here since my first visit for dinner and repeat visits for happy hour which I appreciated for the nosh between bars. But the all-​you-​can-​eat lunch is what I remember the most. My first experience was hangover lunch the day after a gluttonous Thanksgiving. Abandoning self-​respect, we ate ourselves out of our funk.
Thanks for everything over the years Barracuda and I hope your lovely staff land somewhere great… if not in the new concept than somewhere else.

«You’d have me down on my knees
Wouldn’t you, Barracuda?» *air guitar*
Ha! Just kidding. This restaurant is nothing like that song or like Heart. It is a very mellow place. Overall, it isn’t bad. A solid place to get sushi and sashimi for a casual night out with a friend. There isn’t anything going on there that is particularly noteworthy, so it is never on my mind when I want sushi.
Interestingly, however, they do have brunch on the weekends where you can get standard brunch foods like eggs and bacon, or you can get Japanese plates that have sushi, tempura, miso soup, etc. But again, there is very little that is particularly noteworthy about their brunch. I did enjoy the Pancakes on a Stick (which is basically just a sausage link that is battered and fried) as well as the French Toast on a Stick (which is exactly what it sounds like). Alas, their bacon is terrible (how does one mess up bacon???). I also got biscuits and gravy which normally, like bacon, is very difficult to mess up, in my mind. But it was pretty salty and I was only able to make it about halfway through before I gave up on both the bacon and the biscuits and gravy (which may be the saddest sentence I’ve ever typed in my life).
For my alcoholic friends out there (or at least those that enjoy a good inebriation every once in a while), Barracuda does have $ 9 bottomless mimosas! I mean… what!!! That’s a fantastic deal. I didn’t order it myself because I was, unfortunately, nursing a prettay prettay prettay bad hangover from the night before, but it doesn’t take an expert to conclude that you don’t really care much about the flavor when you’re ordering $ 9 bottomless mimosas, am I right?

Sushi and bottomless mimosas? I’m sold!
My boyfriend surprised me by taking us here and I had such a good time.
We came around Sunday during lunch time and it wasn’t packed at all.
Before we even ordered, our server started us off with mimosas. It’s $ 11 for all you can drink!
As for food, we ordered a total of 3 rolls:
1. Lion King Roll: You could never go wrong with this roll! The salmon was fresh, hot, tender, and full of flavor.
2. Red Dragon: Unagi tempura, cucumber roll topped with spicy tuna, jalapeño. Interesting taste, but I didn’t think it was worth the money.
3. The Barracuda: Deep fried soft shell crab, avocado roll wrapped with salmon and mango. This was my fav of the 3 rolls we ordered.
The rolls didn’t wow me for the price we paid, but I was still satisfied.
By the end of our meal, we drank about 5 glasses of mimosas each which got us on a really good level. They are really good with refills, which I appreciate greatly.
Service was great, food was decent, mimosas were awesome :)

WARNING! On Halloween I came here and everything was slow as you can imagine. AND THEN, we got the check, gave him the card and got the receipt back– he had written in an almost 50% gratuity in pen. Next to this charge reads «18% gratuity.» Either they are terrible at math or complete thieves. Don’t go here and if you do, check everything on your bill because they are THIEVES. The manager (Mike) even acknowledged what he did and gave us two drinks for free so we wouldn’t call the police after we saw what they were doing to people.

Barracuda is one of places to go after praise and worship. Food is delicious and price is pretty reasonable. Service is good
Besides this is one of our team member’s favorite.
Will definitely come back an try out different rolls.

Aptly nicknamed «Bearracuda.»
Decent sushi in the Castro, right on Market St. Walking distance from one of my best friends’ places (yes, he’s a Bear). They had a groupon, so we came in to hang out. Had too many rounds of (overpriced) sake.
Do not drink with the Bears, unless you are one of them. I am not. Ouch.
The sushi just wasn’t all that great. Overpriced, decent, not bad, but not great. As someone else posted, if you’re into places like Blowfish, etc, you’ll probably like coming here. Lots of rolls, many «mixed» dishes on the menu.
Yes, there are bottomless mimosas, which will always be a plus.
Waiter was very attentive, polite, and food came out prompt.
The restaurant was very clean.
Lots of eye candy, I mean it *is* «Bearracuda.»
Would I come back here? Sure– but only if I felt like having bottomless mimosas, or because of convenience with my friends. Would I go out of my way to come to sushi here? Nope.

We wanted to do something out-​of-​the-​norm for Easter so Sandy and I decided to do an Asian infused brunch in the city. She came across an article that showcased three restaurants in SF that were «different». Barracuda being one of them as well as Nombe and La Mar Cebichería Peruana. After discussing it, we settled on Barracuda.
Butterfish Sashimi ~ 3 stars: It was good, but not great. I like sashimi that I melts at first bite. Although the flavor was almost there, the texture wasn’t great. Call me a snob. Sorry.
Amberjack Belly Sashimi ~ 3 stars: I love how generous they were — nice thick slices. However, just like the butterfish, the amberjack belly wasn’t on point.
Uni Sashimi ~ 2 stars: I’m not a fan of uni. Everything from the mushy texture to the taste isn’t my thing. Although I don’t think it’s terrible, I always choose to pass. However, Sandy loves uni and will almost always order it if it’s on the menu. But she didn’t like it. Said it was «ehh».
Loco Moco ~ 2 stars: When a restaurant constructs a dish that looks like a drunk college kid put together, I tend to find it amusing for all the wrong reasons. The loco moco is white rice, a ground beef patty and two eggs stacked on top of each other sitting in a shallow pool of gravy. I asked for over easy eggs… What I got were eggs cooked all the way through — no runny yolk! The patty’s flavor was pretty good but dry. If it wasn’t for the gravy, this dish would have tasted like a drought.
Pork Hash ~ 2 stars: Different flavor, same story as the Loco Moco.
I also ordered bottomless mimosas for $ 11. Funny thing is that they don’t use real OJ but it still gave me a buzz… after 9 drinks. I felt like a total degenerate.

Très grosse envie de sushi nous décidons de tester le buffet lunch. Il suffit de remplir la feuille de commande et vos sushi sont préparés à la minute. En attendant nous prenons quelques cocktails (après tout c’est le début du weekend.!) et voilà nos jolies sushi qui arrivent. Très bon et très frais! Je recommande vivement pour un lunch copieux et savoureux!

The Good:
Staff!
Happy Hour menu
Strong drinks
The Bad:
Jalapeño roll on HH menu wasn’t spicy
I came here with a bunch of my friends who frequent Barracuda often. They knew the lay of the land and took full control of ordering. EVERYTHING was great and although the jalapeño roll wasn’t spicy it was still delicious!

Nothing really special for the food here. The rolls that we had were truly non-​Japanese. Nothing bad, but I had better at other places.
We shared the rainbow roll, barracuda, and the castro roll. Out of the three the castro roll was probably the best.
Service was non-​attentive as we had to call the waiter to take our order, then to for the check and to pick it up. Note: the place was not busy at all, with only 3 parties total in it.
We should have gone to another place, but it was nearby and close. Our mistake.

Came here with a Groupon deal, and I probably wouldn’t come back. The Groupon advertised:
1. Variety of shareable appetizers (up to a $ 15 value)
2. One makimono roll and one specialty roll (up to a $ 20 value)
3. Assorted sushi (up to a $ 25 value)
«Though menu is subject to change, value of tasting dinner will remain intact.»
However, this wasn’t the case when we got here. I’ve added a picture of the tasting menu in the restaurant. Basically, instead, we got:
1. Appetizers: Edamame, miso soup, gyoza, veggie tempura, tataki salad
2. Sashimi Sampler & daily special roll
3. No additional sushi
So we were hoping to try the Hamachi Kama as our appetizer, but we weren’t even able to choose it. The tataki salad and veggie tempura were good, but I honestly wouldn’t have ordered any of the other items. The sashimi sampler was good and very fresh, but the daily special roll was nothing special and not memorable. They basically didn’t even give us one of the rolls and the entire last part, the «assorted sushi (up to $ 25 value),» which means the value of the tasting dinner did NOT remain intact as promised.
So the restaurant’s inside is nice, the quality of the food was good but not great, but we were basically disappointed because we’d planned out what to order beforehand but couldn’t order any of it. And the restaurant knows they’re misleading people because when I brought it up, they were ready to just brush it off and said the menu is subject to change, the tasting menu is the way it is, and they couldn’t do anything about it. I’m sure Groupon didn’t come up with that original description on its own, but at least they were nice enough to give me $ 10 credit when I emailed them about it.

Finally got a chance to use my Groupon for the tasting menu and I was very impressed.
There was miso soup and edamame to start. Next was tempura (although it was lacking in portion size probably because it was apart of the tasting menu) and seared snapper tataki salad. That was really yummy. Then came the sushi roll and the sashimi. The roll was ok. It wasn’t that flavorful but the sashimi! That was another story. They gave us a like 6 different types of fish. All of them tasted so fresh and had great textures. It was really delicious. The hamachi and blue fin tuna was my favorite. Yum. With the Groupon it was an amazing deal.
Service was good. I would come back for that sashimi, for sure.

Modern, fused Japanese American bar restaurant.
The décor is modern and contemporary.
They have bottomless mimosas and Japanese American brunch entrees. Time to drink up if you are planning to come here for that!
A peculiar concept, but nonetheless, acceptable and worthy to test out. I came here for my sushi and sashimi, though. Their rolls were good — you can’t go wrong with sushi rolls, unless the ingredients are not fresh and the presentation is lousy. Then, you can really taste the downgrade in terms of quality. I didn’t care for their baked sushi rolls. I favor more of the cold sashimi, sushi rolls, in general.
Adequate staffing and timely served on orders. Not much to complain or compliment about.

eh… about a 2.7 for dinner
Lucky to have gotten in for dinner this weekend, sans rez… one two top and two seats left at sushi bar. Tried the chef tasting… loved the lightness of the tempura, and miso soup was quite perfect ratio.
Best thing was super duoer quick service (traffic was ‘^%€*’, SantaCon or not), and the sashimi sampler, I could eat nightly. Special daily roll had great sushi rice, but overall forgettable.
Mango caipirinha was also quite good.

I have been dining at this location since 2007 «off and on» Through the years, this place have had a few changes including their menu. Service have always been adequate, some even go beyond the basics. Take advantage of their «HAPPY HOUR» (5:00 PM weekdays) with most of their drinks (martinis, shots, sake, beer) ½ the cost! It is a great deal! There are plenty of seats during weeknights, but it might be wise to utilize «OpenTable» for their Sunday brunch. Prices are decent, a bit higher than «Japan Town» standards. If you are on a budget with «$ 40 a day,» it is doable. Most of their «Signature Barracuda Rolls» are under $ 14. Their «Bento» lunch is a good deal for under $ 12. I had their «Sashimi Set» (10 pieces) for $ 25.
After dinner, a good feel for the neighborhood would be to sip your coffee and «eat your cake too» at «Café Flore» right across the street corner. Here, you will find plenty locals exercising their eyes with «people watching.»
Cheers! :p

11÷3÷13 Dinner
The Chirashi ($ 19) still lives up to my expectation and my impression from last time. Generous bowl of chef-​choice fresh raw fish over sushi rice. I couldn’t have better in the Castro.
Addition notes: Barracuda does not offer a dinner bento box. They do offer a omakase tasting menu for $ 60 per person. Like many Japanese restaurants catered to American palate, they have a ton of rolls on the menu. But all I care is the chirashi and sashimi.

Samedi 18 août
J’ai un peu hésité et puis non ! Quand on est emballé, il né faut pas hésiter, c’est donc un 5 étoiles offert surtout par l’agréable surprise gustative que m’a provoqué mon chirashi ! Un très beau plat, bien présenté et une fraîcheur et donc un goût pour le poisson que je n’avais pas retrouvé depuis bien longtemps !
Côté restaurant. Un bel espace, pas trop bruyant pour un samedi soir (étonnant d’ailleurs qu’il y ait si peu de monde), de la musique euro-​danse en fond sonore, un bar, un comptoirs a sushi et des tables (adapté pour les groupes). Le service est agréable et efficace. Le service a lui aussi été rapide dans un premier temps.
Les prix sont un peu plus chers que ceux habituellement rencontrés en Californie (17 $ et des poussières le chirashi), mais si c’est pour avoir ça.
Du côté des l’assiette de mon copain, des Rolls fusions et des Unagi. Un très bon retour pour les premiers, les seconds n’arrivent toujours pas à détrôner Isami (Paris)

Mon-​Fri– all you can eat sushi
Sat & Sun– bottomless mimosas
The food is always fresh and full of flavor. For the non sushi eaters, there are many items on the brunch menu that include French toast, pancakes, eggs, etc.
The crowd is live & the music is bumpin!

Most of the people having dinner tonight were in their 30’s and 40’s. Even though club music was being played, it didn’t get in the way of the overall experience. The music was not in your face and at such a volume that you were distracted but rather it added to the overall positive vibe that this place exudes. Barracuda has a nice energy.
And, of course – let me write about the food.
We shared a couple of very fresh and tasty rolls:
1.The Castro (oshizushi-​bako, Pressed Sushi)
Hamachi, crabmeat, spicy tuna, avocado, rice, tobiko, green onion
2. Rainbow
Crab & avocado covered by a colorful array of raw fish
For our entrees we all opted for the Sizzling Teriyaki Platters that came with seasonal vegetables, miso soup, rice and a salad.
We each tried a different platter – chicken, thinly sliced rib-​eye and salmon teriyaki platters were ordered and all were substantial and flavorful. I was a bit surprised at the amount of food on each platter. We left quite full.
The full bar is a big plus too for those not into wine, beer or sake.
Service was great.

Went in sober and ravenous; came out drunk and satiated. Love it when that happens.
The four of us opted for the bottomless mimosa brunch. Some of us got bento boxes, some of us got rolls, all of us got drunk.
The food was tasty and presented beautifully. Even in my mimosa haze I appreciated the beauty of the dishes. The Castro roll (tobiko, mango, avocado, shiso with five kinds of fish on top; tuna, salmon, hamachi, white tuna, izumi tai:
) was one such dish.
Good service, fair prices, fun people-​watching. God, I love the Castro.