For Kimberly's birthday, we took a short trip down to San Diego for a couple of days.

On the day of her birthday, we went to an omakase dinner at Kinme Sushi downtown on Banker's Hill.

It's a tiny place in the corner of a commercial building, with just this door marking it.
The view to the left with the lovely Kimberly, ...
...and the view to right. There is a single sushi bar that seats up to twelve, but there was a cancellation that night, so we were two of only six customers for the early seating.
Our placesetting with a sparkling wine to start. Very traditional and Japanese.
This chef is the owner. He mainly took care of a Japanese couple to our left and spoke to them in Japanese. He left the English to another chef.
Our first sakizuke (starter course): a tilefish that has been flash-fried so the scales puff up and provide a lovely texture.
The chef showing off some of the ingredients for tonight's dinner: the shellfish...
...and the meat fish.
The assistant chef preparing a smoked king salmon, lighting the fire in the glass cover...
...and leaving it for us to "supervise".
Another sakizuke: bincho grilled corn, served with a miso aioli and shishito salt. The shishito pepper mixed into the salt was really good.
A nimono (simmered course): tako (octopus) with patty pan squash, long bean, and bone dashi.
A sashimi course: you start at five o'clock and eat clockwise from there. Six o'clock is a chopped tartare on a cracker, then a light fish, then the scallop, then the heavier fishes.
While this has been going on, the chef put a pâte à choux dough into muffin tins and made a bread, and chopped up an A5 Wagyu beef strip into a tartare, and put it on the muffin with pickled daikon and an onion jam. Sensational way to present tartare, but it could have used some more texture.
The hassun (expression of the season) course: chawanmushi with free range egg, corn puree, and husk ash.
The hanmoto (rice) course: mainly a variety of nigiri. Here is Kimberly enjoying one.
Here he is hand-forming each rice ball and adding the freshly-ground wasabi and the fish.
As with most nigiri, it is slightly too big to eat as one bite (even though we try), and impossible to cut into two bites.
A close-up detail of one of the nigiri.
A tuna nigiri with caviar on top.
This one is served in crunchy nori (seaweed) for texture and umami.
The nigiri finale: three levels of tuna, starting with a base of tuna belly...
...then topped with a fattier tuna belly, and an even fattier tuna cheek.
The wan-moso (soup) course: edamame soup with red shiso oil. Only OK after the crazy nigiri course.
A yakimono (grilled) course: while the one chef was making the nigiri, another was grilling A5 Wagyu tenderloin on a wood fire. It had amazing char, but still the juicy Wagyu inside. The eggplant was a very tasty foil for the beef, and it was served with tataki sauce.
The kashi (dessert) course: peach amazake sorbet with roasted peaches and meringue. The meringue actually gave it some crunch and texture.
The matcha tea at the end. Can't say we are really a fan of the matcha, ...
...so it is kind of an anti-climax to the meal.

The food was all beautiful and delicious, but very subtle compared to what we are used to for our supermeals. We were left a little wanting at the end, and stopped for ice cream on the way back to the hotel.

The next, day, Rick and Karyn came down to meet us, and we went for a food walking tour in the gaslamp district. We did not take a ton of pictures, because it was a weird tour that we were the only members of.

Stopped in a dumpling place called Lumpia to start, ...
...where we had a couple of fried dumplings.
Made a quick stop for a chocolate in the Ghirardelli store.
That is where we saw Batman eating a sundae. It was Comic-Con that week, so everywhere we went, there were people dressed in cosplay.
We had specialty coffees and a bagel with salmon at this little cafe.

The food tour was a bit disappointing overall. The food was OK, but nothing special. Our tour guide Richard introduced himself as a former chef, so we had higher expectations of the insights he might provide us. However, each place we went, he just went up to the counter and ordered; it's not like the tour was thoroughly planned.

We had planned to stop at Jeune et Jolie on the way back, but decided not to. Wade had broken a tooth the first night, and we decided to cut the third day short and just head back. All in all, we had higher expectations for every part of the trip than was realized, from the hotel to the omakase to the food tour.

We did get to see the play "Duel Reality" at the Old Globe Theater, which was a lot of fun.