This Week In Food: New Omakase

Shinka debuts downtown, New York's popular Bar Oliver is opening an SF outpost in Pac Heights, and a cocktail bar called Olde Fashioned has taken the place of Zhuzh on Nob Hill, all in This Week in Food.

The restaurant at The Jay hotel downtown has made the transition from Prelude, which closed last month, to Shinka, a new Japanese-California omakase restaurant from the Omakase Group and chef Fumio Yonezawa. The menu, a $185 prix fixe with a $70 caviar supplement, includes a Dungeness crab and mushroom chawanmushi that former Chronicle critic Michael Bauer has already raved about, and unique creations like a dish of grilled eggplant and sea urchin with soy koji and fromage blanc.

After still more delays, apparently, Julius' Castle is finally going to reopen in early November. That is, at least, what owner Paul Scott confirmed with KTVU this week. We take this with a grain of salt, given the yearslong delays with this project, and last we heard it was opening in September.

The next new restaurant that we now know is coming to Pac Heights as part of billionaire Neil Mehta's Upper Fillmore Revitalization Project is Bar Oliver, an offshoot of the New York hotspot. As the SF Business Times reports, Bar Oliver is set to take over the former Alice & Olivia space at the corner of Clay and Fillmore (2259 Fillmore), next door to the centerpiece of Mehta's project, the former Clay Theatre. The Chronicle subsequently confirmed that former Bay Area hospitality industry guy Aisa Shelley is behind the project, and Shelley says that unlike the more vermouth-focused New York location, the SF version will have a full bar, but will otherwise mirror the menu in terms of steaks and Spanish pintxos. No opening timeframe has been set, but ultimately, Bar Oliver will join Korean spot Monami from the SSAL team, and Kin Khao/Nari offshoot Kao Soi Ya on the same three-block stretch of Fillmore, as well as Mehta's art-house theater concept.

Two-year-old dance bar Zhuzh on Nob Hill is no more, and in its place we now have Olde Fashioned (1548 California Street), a new cocktail spot that has kept the same floral wallpaper of its predecessor and added some Victorian touches, as the SF Standard reports. While Zhuzh focused on tap cocktails and quick pours, Olde Fashioned is geared more toward well-made classics like Sazeracs and Old Fashioneds, and there is also a Negroni served in teacup. A menu of house cocktails is still in the works.

Old-school FiDi seafood spot Sam's Grill (374 Bush Street) has brought back Saturday dinner service, as Tablehopper reports. That means getting to enjoy some fried oysters or mesquite-grilled Petrale sole in white-tablecloth luxury without having to fight for a table with some of SF's biggest power players during the week (Ms. Tablehopper noted that Willie Brown's standard table up front was occupied by unaware plebs on her recent visit.)

And out in the Outer Sunset, Black Jet Luncheonette is getting ready to open its doors. The offshoot of Bernal's Black Jet Baking Co. was first reported on by SFGate back in March, when Black Jet owners Gillian Shaw Lundgren and Max Newman snagged the space that was formerly home to the legendary Trouble Coffee at 4033 Judah Street. Like the bakery, the luncheonette will feature house-made pop tarts, cakes, and other items, but it will also feature Newman's sandwich artistry. As the Chronicle reported this week, the menu will feature a meatball grinder that once appeared on the bakery's menu, as well other items like a riff on French bread pizza. The opening date is October 23.

Chronicle critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan is back with another starred review, this time giving one star (meaning "good, recommended") to Little Original Joe's, where she says every customer looks happy and the menu makes people feel like a kid again — in addition to being kid-friendly. She's a fan of the classics and the burger, and notes that the signature zucchini fries are "irresistible straight out of the fryer, [but] slightly more resistible the longer they sit." And, she says, the $60 chicken tender-caviar-parmesan-truffle fry tower is "a gimmick gone wrong."