KAIYO

What you need to know

KAIYO is a Nikkei restaurant and rooftop bar inside the Hyatt Place Downtown. Nikkei cuisine blends Japanese technique with Peruvian ingredients, a tradition that emerged from Japanese immigration to Peru in the late 1800s. The menu includes ceviches with yuzu, hand rolls with aji amarillo, and empanadas with Japanese-braised beef.

There are three distinct spaces. The ground-floor restaurant is the sit-down room. The 12th-floor rooftop bar has skyline views. There is also a handroll bar for quick meals.

What to order

The passion fruit pisco sour is a long-running drink. The salmon ceviche and bluefin tuna toast are common starters. The Lima Roll and Kaiyo Roll are the more-ordered rolls. The nikomi beef empanadas combine the Peruvian and Japanese sides of the menu. The miso black cod and Hokkaido scallop udon are on the larger-plates menu.

Rooftop bar

The 12th-floor rooftop has greenery and a tropical-inflected design. Open daily starting at 4pm. Friday and Saturday nights run until midnight. The rooftop gets busy before Giants games since Oracle Park is a short walk away.

Getting there

The restaurant is in the South Beach area of SoMa, about a 10-minute walk from Montgomery BART. On Giants game days the area is busier. Street parking is easier here than in other parts of SoMa; the hotel has a garage.