Sebo

517 Hayes St. (at Octavia St.), San Francisco, CA
(415) 864.2122

The beauty of this chic restaurant is best absorbed at the bar, where the young owners, Daniel Dunham and Michael Black, wing in seafood fresh from Japan and fuss over fish with an intensity that fringes on fanaticism. Their focus pays off in some of San Francisco's finest sushi and sashimi. Fatty bluefin surfaces, delicate and marbled, and house-poached monkfish liver (most sushi restaurants buy the stuff precooked) has a velvety lushness. Ah, so this is why they call it the foie gras of the sea. Where the restaurant stumbles is in its table service, a toxic mix of pretension and ineptitude that might be matched only if Paris Hilton took up particle physics. Watch as the waitstaff dote on friends and loyalists; fume as they slack on fulfilling your simplest requests. Sundays are more tolerable, when Sebo shifts to an izakya menu (bar food and fine sake) and communal seating, and everyone endures the same sluggish pace. The food on these evenings remains elegant and subtle, with such lovely small plates as smoked squid with slivers of vinegar-spiked okra, and chicken and duck gizzards grilled and gussied up with ginger, scallions, and soy. You can't fault the cooking—only the lack of hospitality.