I don’t think I’ve ever seen him pick up an empty plate from a table without saying the words.

“Did you like it?” 

He, of course, almost always, gets a positive response and, almost always, he beams.

The guy I’m talking about is Gerardo. A guy we call Gerry. Not because we prefer to Anglicize his name. It’s how we distinguish him from his chef, another Gerardo. Gerry is the guy who runs Sakura. It’s one of two restaurants in San Miguel de Allende where we go to get our sushi fix. Gerry is a charmer and all of his charms are, I’m always sure. very genuine. When Gerry says, “Did you like it?”, they’re the four words that shout out how important it is for him to please people. We were at Sakura again last night and I can remember hearing “Did you like it?” at least five times.

But before I tell you about Gerry let me tell you, generally, about my favorite Japanese restaurants in my favorite Mexican town.

There are eight restaurants serving sushi that I can think of in San Miguel. Four of them fall immediately to the bottom of the list for breaking my no queso filadelfia rule. Philadelphia Cream Cheese is delightful with things like bagels and smoked salmon but it absolutely, definitely, does not belong on sushi rolls.

The two restaurants serving sushi that top my list are Ryoko and Sakura. They both serve very fresh, very delicious, very creative dishes but they’re very, very different from each other.

Ryoko is a slick, stylish spot. Sakura, despite some fancy graphics, is a bit of a hole in the wall. Ryoko is neat and tidy. Sakura is a sloppy mess. Ryoko has an impressive wine list. Sakura runs down the street to buy a bottle when you ask for their wine list. Ryoko has sophisticated dinnerware. At Sakura, there might be chips in your ramen bowl.

So where do I go most? To Sakura. And why?

Gerry.

When we arrived last night Gerry handed us the extraordinarily extensive but almost unreadable menus. We blame it on our poor Spanish language skills but diez años of Duolingo couldn’t help us get through all of these pages.

The start of any and every good Japanese is a bowl of miso soup. Two bowls arrived at our table.

“It’s so simple to make but so simple to mess it up”, said Don Day’s wife. “So many of them have too much salt. Chef Gerardo (the other guy responsible for your pleasures at Sakura) here gets it perfect.”

“Did you like it?”, said Gerry (the guy who runs Sakura not Gerardo the chef). “Did you like it”, he repeated.

We tackled the almost impossible to read menu again. We had fond memories of Sakura’s tuna dish that they’d Mexicanized with guacamole. We argued about whether it was yellowfin or yellowtail (it’s better that couples argue over the names of tuna than what their kids name their grandchildren) and hoped that what we ordered from Gerry was what we wanted.

I leaned over the counter and Gerardo (the chef) was pouring yellowfin…no yellowtail…tuna. I was optimistic.

“Did you like it?”, said Gerry. We told him it was as good or perhaps better than we remembered. Underneath his mass of jet black locks that I’ve always envied, he beamed.

It was time for our nigiri (what us foodies call those rectangles of rice with slices of raw fish on top). In days of old, almost all fish at sushi bars was fresh and we used to ask the Kims or Parks (they were almost always Korean) what was the freshest. We suspected their recommendations were to move the stinkiest swimmers from the back of the fridge but were never quite sure. These days, everything or almost everything in a Japanese restaurant is previously frozen. The choice is easier these days.

Gerry recommended the hamachi, the salmon and the unagi. Don Day’s Wife repeated those words I’ve heard so many times before. “I don’t eat eel.” Gerry brought us the hamachi and salmon.

Ryoko charges 50 pesos for their freshly sliced wasabi. Chef Gerardo shapes his like a leaf; Sakura doesn’t charge any extra for theirs.

One of the reasons that Sakura and Ryoko are at the top of San Miguel’s sushi list is their use of nutty, Japanese short grain rice and the generous amount of fish on their nigiri. Sakura didn’t disappoint us.

“Did you like them?”, said Gerry, varying a little from his usual line.

The list of maki at Sakura is bewildering so we passed the responsibility over to Gerry. We couldn’t remember seeing Rocka roll, Gerry’s strong recommendation, on the menu before. There was the obligatory “definitely no eel” question from Don Day’s Wife and we were on.

The roll combined raw and cooked, hot and cold, crunchy and creamy, all beautifully. It was the highlight of our evening. Before Gerry had the chance, I chimed, “Yes, we liked it, more than liked it.”

We were stuffed. To the gills. But there was a problem. A problem we face almost every week.

About 30 years ago, Japanese restaurants started to introduce a soup, a stew, called ramen. We went bonzo for it. But it filled us as fat as a blubbery beluga. Making it impossible to do the sushi thing after. 

We’d split our tastebuds in half. We’d only order sushi or we’d only order ramen, or at least we would try. But there were always temptations.

There we were at Sakura and Chef Gerardo was constructing a bubbling bowl of broth, with noodles, greens, eggs and pork belly for a customer at the bar and we caught a look and the aroma. As stuffed as we were with our sushi, ramen was leading us astray again.

We asked Gerry if he could simply serve us a small bowl of the pork broth. Gerardo added a little chile oil and it was brought to the table.

“Yes, we liked it, Gerry.”

Gerry has always been a bit of a mystery to us. How did a 24-year-old guy with just a few months experience working in a restaurant get to run Sakura? He told us Sakura is a family affair. Gerry’s parents own a restaurant in Pachuca, about half an hour north of Mexico City. It’s called Sakura Roll. It has a similar but not the same menu. It has three locations but focuses on home delivery.

In San Miguel de Allende, the focus is very much more a bricks and mortar business.

“It’s about no frills, chill, an unpretentious atmosphere”, said Gerry, “mi casa es tu casa vibes”.

“We want to be known for top value. The finest quality ingredients and cuts of fish at reasonable prices.”

We asked for the bill. Remove the cheap price of the cheap wine and the total was less than 1000 pesos. We consider that a very inexpensive evening out.

The word “omakase” is about letting a chef make all of the decisions on what you’re going to eat.

“Next time, trust Gerardo with his off-menu adventure, a one of a kind omakase experience”, said Gerry. “You’ll like it.”

“As long as there’s no unagi, no eel, I know I’ll like it”, said Don Day’s Wife.

Sakura is located at Calle Cardo 2 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The restaurant is open Tuesday to Saturday, 1:00 to 10:00 pm; Sundays 2:00 to 10:00 pm.