This good overview captured much of the spirit my friends and I saw in Kumino meals. Not your typical ramen shop at all, and we found a surprisingly ambitious range of dishes all well executed. Kumino risks being discovered and mobbed.

One quirk stood out in this review. The writer's glib characterization in the last paragraph makes me wonder, as a frequent downtown diner, what range of Castro-Street restaurant experiences he's actually had. Downtown MV has over 100 extremely diverse restaurants. While none is exactly like Kumino (or any other), few people well experienced with them would make any broad-brush assertion like "atmosphere dominates" over food. Some of them are clearly and utterly focused on the food. Yu-Gen's creative modern Japanese ramen riffs, now including Yokohama Tan Tan soup noodles that pay homage to Chengdu's famous dan dan mian; hole-in-the-wall places like Song Pa, which took over from venerable Totoro and continues its tradition of dishing out Korean delights; the very authentic German pub specialties at Bierhaus; two low-key but up-scale Japanese restaurants with formal chefs (Sushi Tomi and Kappo Nami Nami) that have drawn people from all over the county for years. How many customers would really rate Drunken Lobster as an "atmosphere over food" place, or ignore the widly Italian pizzas at Doppio Zero (Naples dialect spoken in-house), or La Fontaine's classic fonds-de-cuisine sauces? Don't forget Chez TJ with its Michelin stars (and its former chefs, Skenes and Kostow, now running two of the most respected restaurants in the US: Saison and Meadowood). Those are just a few counterexamples to the characterization. Is this writer one of those people whose whole impression of Castro Street formed mainly at Cascal?

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment/personal attack]

not sure what it said, but I think I would have liked it