Yu Me Ya - Sake House

Yu Me Ya Sake House is good for eating Japanese snacks, drinking potent rice wines, and then stumbling home. This probably explains why the family-owned Encinitas restaurant along Highway 101 is popular with the locals.
Inside Yu Me Ya, a bungalow with a bamboo stick border around its 30 x 50 dining room, the titans of reggae (Tosh, Marley) lay down a Trenchtown soundtrack. Yet the fare is truly Nipponistic. Don't ask for a Canada Dry: The soft drinks are Japanese imports. Some of the menu offerings don't even bother with a description. Want to know what a Takoyaki Takoball is? Delicious. But the menu doesn't say that. Nor does it say it's a battered octopus ball that looks like a sauce-covered donut hole, has a chewy octo-leg center, and tastes like a mayonnaisy, fried sushi roll. (Order it.)
Thanks to the curt menu, you'll probably spend the night getting advice from Yuka Nakai, the waitress with the light brown bob, and her sister Fumika, the waitress with a penchant for teal eye shadow. They did a great job of guiding my table ... right to the sake menu. The Nakai family -- which includes mom Hiroko and dad Kiyohiro, both in the kitchen - have run Yu Me Ya for three years come August 15. And they insist that you swim among their many sakes.
"We drink sake every night with meals. It's like French people drink wines," says Yuka. "We love sake. We want everybody to try the sake."
So start with a sake tasting. The premium flight goes for $6. My table sampled three, 1-ounce glasses of cold waters ranging from dry to drier to the alcohol-content equivalent of Mad Dog 20/20, as a companion noted. (That would be the Hakutaka, aka the White Hawk.)
While getting wet, you nibble on small dishes, aka izakaya or Japanese tapas. Yu Me Ya's 30 or so hot and cold dishes are snack-size complements to sake. Although I considered the Sauteed Shishitou green peppers ($3.95) more of a garnish. The skinny, sweet peppers showed up with dancing bonito fish flakes and were campfire smoky, earthy, and as empty as a banana pepper.
The Albacore Carpaccio with Goma mayonnaise (thinly sliced tuna, resting on daikkon raddish strings, $6.95) did the job of freshening the palate between sake pulls. The Fried Tofu in smoked bonito broth, ornamented with mushroom, grass-like greenery and scallions ($3.95), coated the tummy, but frustrated the hand. The hunk of bean curd arrived as if straight out the tofu tub. I picked it apart with chopsticks, and the process wasn't pretty. (Surely there's a knife back in the kitchen.)
The evening lost momentum when we split the Wakame (udon and fresh seaweed, $8.95) from a giant bowl, accompanied by two small bowls and what could be a prototype for a ladle. It was a mini-barge with a handle, and could not scoop the silky, squirmy noodles. The table was wet with udon. But far be it from me to discourage you from trying the dish when the owner hails from the birthplace of that noodle. (Kiyohiro Nakai's from Kagawa.)
Yes, there's sushi on the menu - way over on page four, above the miso soup and rice add-ons. The $8.95 eel roll was okay, its sesame, avocado, eel, rice on the outside, and ponzu sauce familiar.
But Yu Me Ya's not Sushi-centric. And anyway, there's more to Japanese food than raw fish. I could eat a bowl full of Yu Me Ya's crunchy, non-greasy Potato Croquettes (filled with curry, peas and carrots $3.95). But only two golden cakes come per order. Because real sake lovers aren't looking for a full meal: They want a flavorful variety.
And if you're still hungry by the end of the evening, try the small soup-like Ocyazuke bowl: hot tea over rice ($5.95) with wild vegetables and dried shiso leaf flakes. It's like a mellow, under water stir fry. And good for balancing out alcohol levels, so you can safely stumble home. (SignOnSanDiego.com)