SF’s most exclusive restaurant is delicious, and doomed

What would you say if I told you that the hottest restaurant in San Francisco right now is an unmarked ramen counter that doesn’t have a phone number, doesn’t let you pick your courses and charges right around $200 a head? You’d probably be surprised — didn’t the pandemic kill off this sort of dining trend? — and then a touch resigned. Of course San Francisco still has this kind of restaurant. Of course yuppies all across this city would sell all of their Dogecoin to get a reservation. As long as San Francisco exists, something about its food scene will piss you off, while also beckoning your subconscious. ‘No bowl of ramen could be worth $200, could it? Maybe it could. I do love ramen, after all. Well, let’s look at the menu and … oh OK I’d eat there if I could, otherwise DOWN WITH THE RICH.’

I have eaten at this restaurant now. A year ago, SFGATE sent me to try out the old-money stalwart that was Chez Panisse, so it was only natural that this time around I’d try out its diametric, new-money opposite. The restaurant is called Noodle in a Haystack, and it’s run by husband-and-wife team Clint and Yoko Tan. The Tans started Haystack up after moving here from Japan. Now, every night in the Inner Richmond, they serve a pristine omakase menu — ramen included — to patrons who, in all likelihood, make far more money than they do. It makes for a curious dynamic, one you’ll have more than enough time to ponder while waiting for your next dish.

Because this is a casual prix fixe joint, the kind that David Chang pioneered back in the aughties with his Momofuku Ko in New York: You will scheme and grind to get a seat. You will pay for your meal well in advance. You will walk right past the front of the restaurant at your reserved time because it has no sign hanging above it that says YES THIS IS THE $200 RAMEN JOINT. Then you’ll be welcomed inside the tiny space by the proprietor, seated at the counter, and treated to a two-plus-hour dinner party/eating class. A certain type of foodie knows the rituals of this kind of establishment well.

I, surprisingly, am not one of them. I never ate at Ko, nor have I ever eaten at Masa, Per Se, Minibar or any similar gastronomic temple. But I’d always wanted to try them, because I’m smart and because I have a tongue. Here now is what I learned at Noodle in a Haystack while 1 percent-ing my way to deliciousness.

Haystack’s physical layout is one born out of necessity. The kitchen is in the center of the restaurant, because there was no other space to put it. There are no separate tables for diners, just a counter surrounding the main cooking space. The Tans only have two ovens on hand, which are also out in the open and aren’t much larger than a commercial microwave. These ovens have humidity control, which I didn’t even realize an oven could have. The rest of the open kitchen is reserved for prep, which Clint did right in front of us.

And lemme tell you, watching him do this prep is agony. You ever stare at the kitchen in a normal restaurant because you’re hungry as s—t, and then you see the chef put a plate under the heat lamp and pray that’s your food? OK, now imagine that sensation but for two hours. Service is not slow at Haystack, but the proximity of food prep to food eater (me) makes every minute feel like an hour. At home, I can steal a bite of food right out of the pan before my wife catches me and tells me that I’m going to give everyone COVID by being so unsanitary. And then I do it again.

That isn’t an option at Noodle in a Haystack (or any restaurant, really). You have to sit, and look, and wait. I saw fat dollops of caviar I couldn’t touch. I saw an enormous cut of A5 wagyu beef that I couldn’t grab with my bare hands and dry hump in front of everyone else in attendance. For $200, you’d think they’d let you do such unholy things to a cut of meat. Alas, manners are still required here.

To the Tans’ credit, they keep impeccable manners of their own. While serving the first course (a double-baked miniature financier cake topped with smoked soy creme fraiche and the aforementioned caviar; four stars), Clint gave diners a friendly lesson in how he prepared the dish (the financier is Yoko’s creation). Even though the amuse-bouche was now ready and set at my place, I felt like I had to wait out his lecture to eat it, and that I’d have to repeat that wait for every successive dish. Two enterprising (hungry) customers near me felt no such hesitation and dove right in. ‘Can they really do that?’ I wondered. Then I did it. Clint didn’t mind. Praise the lord.

Ever heard of the adorable firefly squid? Well, I ate one for my second course at Haystack. I’m so used to eating rubbery fried calamari rings that I figured that all squid tasted the same. Not so. Clint told us that the center of these firefly squids would taste creamy, almost ricottalike. And I’ll be damned, they did. I know that “creamy squid innards” isn’t the most appetizing turn of phrase, but you’re gonna have to trust me here. These squids were incredible. Two bites and I already knew I’d never taste anything like that again in my life. And that’s what you’re paying $200 for, right? From that course on, I let go all the way and started photographing all of my plates, both to brag to my family and also to help retain the memory.

Our first ramen course of the night was a cold variation on Chinese dan dan noodles, mixed with sesame paste, ramp vinegar and “butter” made from wagyu fat. And here I discovered the oceanic gulf between a genuine delicacy and dishes that aim to steal its valor. Real A5 wagyu beef is a cut of beef so perfectly marbled, and so unctuous, that you would kill loved ones just for another taste. The $15 “wagyu sliders” on the menu at your local chain restaurant are, uh, not that.

Bereft of a working stove, Clint Tan brought a giant slab of wagyu out onto the counter and started blasting it with a kitchen torch. While doing so, he conversed openly with every diner at the table. All of them were as rapt as Nicholas Hoult’s character in “The Menu.” Me, I was staring at the beef. I didn’t really want to share it with everyone else at the counter. They were perfectly nice people, and all terribly polite. But f—k, man, that was real wagyu. When Clint began to carve the steak, I kept a close eye on him to make sure that he didn’t toss out any scraps. If he had made overtures to do so, I legitimately would have stopped him and asked to eat them. I’m a dad. I know good fat when I see it. But Clint used all of the steak, finishing it off with a (nontheatrical) sprinkle of salt. The two pieces I got were exquisite. For the following course, he’d give a pile of fresh corn the same taste of fire. Best corn I’d ever eaten. A torch is now sitting in my Amazon cart.

For those of you with nagging back ailments (raises hand), you’ll find yourself greatly conflicted over the barstools at Haystack. Each stool has a back, which is more than most barstools can claim. But the seat is tilted, almost as if the stool is trying to get rid of you. Forcing diners into uncomfortable seats is a hallmark of certain restaurants in San Francisco and New York that rely on quick customer turnover to boost profits. But Haystack was never meant to be that kind of place. You’re meant to stay, learn, savor and luxuriate. That’s not easy to do when you’re 6’3” and dying to get up because the seat you’re in wasn’t quite built for you.

I strongly doubted that the Tans intentionally bought seats that made my sciatica angry, and I didn’t want to complain to them about the chairs because these people were clearly trying their best. So I relieved my back by getting up multiple times to relieve, uh, myself. While taking a piss, I discovered that the hand soap dispenser was specially calibrated to keep the soap at 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit). And lemme tell you, that soap tasted INCREDIBLE. Best soap I’d ever eaten.

After an hour of courses, we got to Haystack’s signature dish: a fat bowl of Hainan chicken shio ramen. These are ramen noodles cooked in broth made from water that’s been run through a special filter otherwise only available in Japan, and then topped with smoked pork neck, compressed chicken thigh and a matzo ball-esque dumpling made of chicken and spent clam. The thigh, against all odds, was the star of the dish: deboned, rolled into a roulade, vacuum-sealed and then slow-poached in a sous vide cooker. I have eaten so, so much chicken in my life. I’d never had chicken like this, cooked so meticulously that it became delicate on the tongue. How was I supposed to go back to regular-ass chicken after having that? Now I had to buy a kitchen torch AND a sous vide cooker? S—t.

As for the noodles themselves, they were good but nothing exceptional. But there’s a reason for this, and it’s more heartbreaking than it is disappointing:

Clint Tan can’t make ramen noodles on site, because he told our group that he and his wife cannot afford the $20,000-plus ramen-making machine they’d need for the job. I know that sounds absurd, given what Haystack charges its patrons. But this restaurant is, despite all of the acclaim, something of a seat-of-the-pants operation. I already told you about the lack of stoves, but that’s hardly the only Spartan element on display here. There’s no bartender at Haystack. There’s no event room, no decor on the walls and no ramen machine, with Clint Tan sourcing the noodles instead from a special vendor. Come service time, there’s nothing but you, the Tans and the food.

That’s enough for a lot of customers, especially given the quality of meats on display, but perhaps not enough to consider this place a full-blown restaurant. Clint says Haystack exists more as a “lab” than as a restaurant, which puts it in the same realm as the fabled European giants Noma and elBulli. Noma is closing this year because head chef René Redzepi found it “unsustainable” to keep open, both financially and personally. And elBulli stopped offering table service in 2011. This is food as high fashion, consumed by a precious few but visionary enough to influence worldwide dining trends. That’s why people are willing to pay so much to eat here. They’re paying to claim firsties.

But it’s a remarkable strain on the people who make this kind of food. Despite selling out the house night after night, the margins for Clint and Yoko Tan are razor-thin, so much so that they’ll eventually have to adapt this restaurant in some way to make it more sustainable, i.e. profitable. Noodle in a Haystack is an honest-to-God mom-and-pop business, and you know the fate of most mom-and-pop businesses in this country.

As such, survival for the Tans lies in evolution. That might mean opening a larger restaurant, with Haystack operating as an experimental pop-up housed within it. It might mean dreaming up a fast-casual concept that makes good money but doesn’t feel like a cynical exercise in brand extension. Or it might mean quitting entirely and moving back to Japan because, as Clint told one diner the night I was there, he’s not quite sure why he and his wife left that country to begin with.

And that’s strange to contemplate, isn’t it? The extended foodie universe is dependent on customers who prioritize experience tourism over all other expenses. They’re chasing something that is, at its core, ephemeral. The taste of fresh uni on your tongue only lasts for so long, and then it’s over. The restaurant that serves it to you is almost equally temporary. It won’t last forever, even if the demand is exorbitant. This is hard s—t, and the only people who can do it aren’t always able to keep it up. Most can’t, or they simply turn into Wolfgang Puck and coast on their early reputations. 

So while I was occupying rare air by nabbing a seat at Noodle in a Haystack, I was also bearing witness to something all too human: the struggle to keep your head above water. I watched Yoko Tan garnish plates with sauces housed in tiny little squirt bottles, and it didn’t feel like an act of pretension, but of painstaking labor. I want that labor to pay off in greater rewards for her and for her husband, and in a way that allows more diners to experience their singular cooking talents. Selling me an Applebee’s-sized portion of the caviar financier would be a good place to start. I’ll pay you $1,000, Clint and Yoko.