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The Steve Descends
Food Review: The Raw Edition
Disposition: All Good Trays Go to Heaven

Food Review: The Raw Edition

With The Steve safely tucked away in his corporate cocoon – safe from the looky-loo gazes of star-struck reporters -- I was now ready to sample the preparations of Caffe Mac’s finest. If one subscribes to the maxim that a restaurant can be most accurately judged by the relative freshness of its least fresh food (and one might not subscribe to this maxim, for I just made it up), then it stands to reason that buying plates of raw fish and vegetables might give one a pretty good idea of just how wonderful Caffe Mac really is.

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Here we go. First the sushi. There was not a large variety of fish in the refrigerated sushi case. As a result, the small collections of fish that were actually on display looked a bit lost and lonely. Nonetheless, the color of the salmon, tuna, yellowtail, et al appeared perfectly correct, so I settled on a familiar collection of maki and nigiri.

With an uncanny consistency, the sushi tasted fresh but bland. Professional food writers (I am not one of them) will describe proper ebi as being succulent and almost sweet. Unfortunately, the shrimp on my slab of sushi rice was, for a lack of a better term, “flat.” No sweetness, and not a hint of that perfect turgidity one experiences when biting into a perfectly prepared piece of shrimp. It almost seemed as if the shrimp had been treated with something from a spray can, some kind of neutralizing agent that locks fish in a permanent state of freshness but also robs it of all flavor.

My tobiko-themed pieces were equally disappointing. With trademark amounts of saltiness and crunchiness, one should be able to detect a single, miniscule tobiko egg on the tip of one’s tongue, and then toss it around like a hacky-sack—from molar to tongue, from molar to tongue--because that’s just how strong and rigid a good flying fish egg will be. Sadly, while Caffe Mac’s tobiko had all the structural integrity one would expect from a crunchy, high-quality roe, it had none of the saltiness.

And so it was to be with all the sushi. The hamachi roll: bland but inoffensive. The California roll: bland but inoffensive. The unagi roll: OK, this one was a bit offensive, because the chef went heavy with the teriyaki sauce on top.

My total sushi upshot? It was two steps above the packaged stuff one gets at the supermarket, but also three or four steps below the truly sublime sushi one gets at in Northern California finest fish bars. In other words: In the context of Asian-themed lunch cuisine, Caffe Mac’s sushi was fan-bloody-tastic compared to the Monosodium Ramenate we get from the Mac|life snack machine, and I would gladly give up 50 percent of my vacation days if a sushi bar of Caffe Mac’s caliber set up shop at my own corporate HQ.

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Dining only improved after the sushi, as my second course consisted of a hand-selected medley of salad fixings, with each element being both fresh and packed with flavor. As you can see from the accompanying photograph, I sourced an eclectic mixture of beans, cheeses, and tomatoes.

Let’s talk beans first. I went for garbanzos and what can only be described as “non-specific members of the legume family, green.” Perhaps I chose the green ones because they reminded me of pear Jelly-Bellies, I don’t know, but I can tell you that both the ‘banzos and greenies had none of that waxy-starchy pulpiness that crappy canned beans are famous for.

The cheese? High-quality and absolutely fresh. The mozzarella balls were soft, creamy, and perfectly coated in herbs. The hard cheese? I don’t know what kind it was—maybe Parmesan, maybe Romano, maybe even Asiago—but it certainly wasn’t the crap from the green can.

And finally we come to the tomatoes. This meal was consumed in early August, arguably a few weeks short of the prime heirloom harvest period, but the tomatoes were just as rich, meaty, and bursting with flavor as anything you would have found at your local Farmer’s Market. And don’t be alarmed by the pink-colored thing you see in the photo. That’s a slice of tomato, not a piece of sushi. It’s supposed to look that way.

All in all, my lunch at Caffe Mac was a revelation. Even the somewhat disappointing food was spectacular within the context of what’s available in the Mac|Life offices. I can’t wait to try Apple’s pizza – in the almost inconceivable event that I’m ever invited back.

Oh, and by the way, Caffe Mac was also home to a piece of technology that left me thoroughly mesmerized. To omit any discussion of it would be a crime. So let’s continue, shall we?