johndunham’s posthaven

Ordinarily the SF / Sausalito ferry companies pretty much call it a day around dinner time.  But Blue and Gold runs a Friday night 9:40 PM return from Sausalito making a Friday night dining excursion possible.  So we did.  Friends had gushed to us about Sushi Ran (107 Caledonia) in Sausalito.  So we decided to make that the object of our Friday night staycation dining adventure.  These snaps capture a bit of the experience.

Oh, and our friends were right.  Sashimi and sushi lovers will rejoice at Sushi Ran.   The food and presentation are exquisite.  It's not cheap, but it is great value.

Okay, so the squid ink pasta didn't turn out so great.   Actually, it was more of a disaster.  There, I said it.  Acceptance is a good thing.

The effort reminded us once again that you violate lean startup principles at your own own peril.  So let's use those lemons to make lemonade and focus in on a couple of these.  If you think of more, please chime in in the comments.

What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?

For first-time homemade pasta makers, squid Ink pasta is not it.  We wasted the first batch because we added the squid ink too late in the process.  But ultimately our pasta sucked, but not because of the squid ink.  We'd have been better off making plain pasta and we'd have learned the same lesson at much lower cost.

Metrics

We had a goal of producing 16-oz of fresh pasta to match the sauce recipe we planned.  Our first mass of pasta dough weighted in at 9 oz and was not going to be enough (traffic) to create the whole meal (revenue).  Adding more ingredients onto a short batch?  Not so good.  Restart.

Fail Fast

When all proceeds normally, making sauce is much more difficult than the pasta that carries it. So we sent several large blobs of failed pasta into the compost bin.  We got this part right.  But we would have managed more iterations and increased our chances of edible pasta before our self-set 9 PM dining deadline.  Out of time = out of cash.

Early Warnings

We took a bunch of pictures.  We should have recognized the early warning that not all was well with our squid ink pasta when the best picture was of us playing with our food, pasta writing on the cutting board.

So we've been jonesing to pay Benu a visit for the year or so since they opened.  Here's a photo journey through their tasting menu—at least of the items I remembered to shoot—preceded by the, ahem Benu menu.  Short summary:  well worth the visit.  Longer version:  Exquisitely rendered innovative combinations of world-class cuisines and flavors with impeccable, incredibly authentic, attentive personal service from arrival to departure.  Plan on nearly four hours.  

Extended version:  you can tell more about an organization from how they handle things that go wrong than when things go right.  An unfortunate accident happened while the faux "shark fin" soup was being placed on the table.  Once in a lifetime kind of thing.  The way the entire staff responded made a gold star out of what at an ordinary restaurant would have been a bit of a black eye.  Dining at Benu is a truly exceptional experience.

Can you tell we're enjoying our staycation?

with salsa and pecorino romano.

day 2 staycation breakfast.  first griddle-cooked omelette.  

Day 1 Staycation dinner.

It must officially be Spring.  My mother loved daffodils.  They remind me of her.

It's just a matter of time.  Just for grins, I rented one and took it to the orchid show at Ft Mason yesterday.  Here's the shots from that.  It rained this afternoon, so I thought I'd see what I could do.  Backyard plus SF Conservatory of Flowers.  Wow, it's so fun.

You can see the full collection here.