This article is adapted from the September 25, 2021, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here. On a recent visit to San Francisco, I stopped for lunch in Japantown. Online reviews had called the place I picked a “sushi train” restaurant, but when I entered, there were no tiny locomotives towing nigiri in sight. Perhaps, I thought, as I ordered off a touchscreen, because of the pandemic. Then a whirring sound made me jump, and a sleek, tiny bullet train swept by at eye-level, carrying…
