With limited fine dining options in Oakland, Sun Moon Studio is a wonderful addition to this city.

Oakland does have an amazing food scene but it lacks in the fine dining department with Commis being the only restaurant that I can think of. Sun Moon Studio is a tiny restaurant that opened almost a year ago where Sarah Cooper and Alan Hsu are the only people in the kitchen and their tasting menu focuses on farm to table cuisine. We dined on a Sunday night where they only do one seating (they usually have two seatings per night) and the guest count was 10 people total. Since it’s such a small restaurant, reservations are hard to come by.

Tommaso and I started off with a few of their non-alcoholic beverages made in house. The blackberry kombucha had the right amount of acidity and tang while the salted strawberry spritz was the perfect balance of sweet and salty.

The first dish from the tasting menu was a silky house made tofu custard similar to chawanmushi with that jiggly texture. Pieces of cooked cabbage draped over the custard perfumed with fragrant ginger.

This was a solid crudo dish of yellowfin tuna with radish, puffed buckwheat and kumquat. While it was tasty, we felt like it was missing something. However the vinaigrette on the bottom was really nice.

These mini egg custard tarts were excellently made where the pastry was buttery and flaky and the custard was silky smooth without being overly eggy. The bountiful amount of salmon roe added some saltiness to the overall rich egg custard tart.

This was one of my favorite dishes of the night as the Taiwanese sausage had so much flavor and the warm brioche was pillowy soft. The cutest little “hot dog”!

These salt and pepper Japanese sweet potato bites were another favorite as the outside was super crackly and crispy with its velvety interior. All the garnishes added pops of flavor.

A perfectly seared scallop was the star of the dish with spring asparagus, a burnt onion sauce, and another sauce that I cannot recall but it was delicious.

This was almost like a rice porridge, really comforting, with slices of abalone, vibrant snap peas, and seaweed.

The last savory course was the flat iron steak with black pepper and wilted mustard greens. The beef was tasty but not my favorite cut of meat.

These delicious gougères were served with the beef course and were stuffed with Mt. Tam cheese where it oozed out after taking a bite. These were great and I could have easily eaten more.

Who knew shiso ice cream could be so delightful? It was an unexpected flavor that wasn’t overpowering and really worked well with the cocoa nibs

The black sesame cheesecake was good but not my favorite as I wanted the overall dessert to be sweeter which is most definitely a personal preference. Perhaps the roasted strawberries or the whipped cream could have been sweeter as the actual cheesecake was slightly on the savory side.

The meal ended with these juicy sweet mandarins.

Since we were celebrating my dad’s birthday, they brought out warm classic chocolate chip cookies that were so nostalgic.

A fun touch was a small basket of fries to share after all the desserts in case anyone was still hungry. While none of us were particularly hungry after the tasting menu, we had no issues finishing this. We also received three mini olive oil cakes (forgot to take a picture) to take home which were so scrumptious and very moist.

Sun Moon Studio is one of the best new restaurants that have opened within the past year in Oakland and I found the tasting menu approachable yet still exciting. Dishes were delicious and beautiful but not overly complicated which I appreciated so my rating is an 8/10.