Sachio Kojima: Pretty Much the Best Thing About Hecho

By Jonathan Kauffman Wed., Mar. 21 2012 at 8:11 AM

Categories: 'Eat'

Melissa Barnes

Sachio Kojima in action at Hecho.

You know how you can be beset with a feverish curiosity about a place and still can't bring yourself to go there? Exhibit one: the Audium. Exhibit two: Hecho, Joseph Manzare's year-old sushi and tequila restaurant.

I'd been trying to piece together in my head how sushi and tequila would pair with one another long before the downtown restaurant opened, but, well, you know. It took the return of legendary sushi chef Sachio Kojima (of Kabuto fame) to San Francisco two months ago to lure me to the restaurant, the subject of this week's full-length restaurant review in the Weekly.

Kojima's an amazing sushi chef to watch, perhaps the quickest I've ever seen, but at Hecho he can get so busy that it's hard to interact with him at the sushi bar. (And why else would you be sitting at the sushi bar? Wait, where else would you even want to sit at a sushi restaurant?) My second meal there, seated 10 feet away from both a mariachi band and a mob of margarita-soused tourists, counts as the most bizarre meal I've eaten this year, compounded by the fact that sushi and tequila turn out to go together as well as I had imagined. Which is to say, not at all.

If you do make a pilgrimage to Hecho to sit at Kojima's bar, I'd have one guideline: Only order what the master makes himself. That covers drinks as well as dinner.

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