YEARS AGO, making the now familiar jog from Bumfuck, Idaho, back to here, I saw a thing that wouldn't change my life, much as I wanted it to. It was a bridge. In a field off the side of the road, just setting there, displaced in the dirt and the weeds, connecting nothing to nowhere. Older and wiser, I can credit the Weiser River now, probably, for leaving that bridge where it improbably left it. The Weiser River flooded dramatically on New Year's Day, 1997. I have six hours of homemade video footage and lots and lots of couch-pillowed popcorn to prove it.

At the time that I saw this bridge, though, I didn't know about the flood. I did a double take, twisted my neck, swerved off the road into and back out of the ditch, then continued on, shaken and impressed. Philosophically, had I known then what I know now (i.e., absolutely nothing), I would have stopped the car, gone to the bridge, and sat down on it.

But back then, being a writer and poet, I used to see things metaphorically. I thought I had the one I'd been waiting for all my life: Something solid enough to build a whole novel around. Something odd enough to keep me interested for however long it takes to write a novel.

It takes about three or four hours to write one of these columns.

I spent five or six years filling notebooks with notes, and recycling bins with failed sentences, trying to wrap my windy words and tissue-thin fictional characters around this very real goddamn steel bridge in this field in Bumfuck, Idaho.

Don't think I ever actually officially gave up on the novel until just a few months ago, when I gave up on writing in general – except for Cheap Eats, of course, and songs and songs and songs about chickens and butter and eggs. So now I get to expend my biggest, heaviest metaphor ever on a restaurant review! The restaurant: a colorfully funky little joint called On the Bridge, in Japantown Center.

I've been sitting on this great place for a few weeks, ever since I ate there one day with Wayway and F. Rex. In the excitement of some other great places with some other great people, I kind of forgot about it until right now – well, yesterday. I just got back from Idaho, where I didn't see any bridges just setting there off the side of any roads connecting any empty fields to themselves. But I did get to show my pretty, painted, bejewelried, skinny little self to lots of ranchers, truckers, and bikers. Mostly at a tiny, rural town café called the Gobbler, where I ate twice and finally understood what my friends all meant when they said I was brave.

Except for the time I jumped out of an airplane, I had never in my life felt the least little bit brave, until, all alone, I dipped my fuchsia-tipped toes into that sea of cowboy boots. What else I was wearing was a somewhat slightly see-through shirt, which ever so subtly showed off my flat-chested tan lines. As the cowboy hats all turned in unison, I said to myself, Oh.

And then: Oh well.

It was a good day to die. For my last meal I ordered a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a slice of blueberry pie. Luckily I lived to tell about it, because the burger was way overdone. Next time I order a last meal, there, I'm definitely going for the chicken-fried steak.

On the Bridge in Japantown Center, I got this kind of like chicken-fried ground pork and beef patty ($8.35), except it came with rice instead of mashed potatoes, and "tonkatsu" sauce instead of gravy. F. Rex had a vegetable curry, and Wayway had flying fish roe spaghetti. Oh, and I ordered edamame, of course, because supposedly soy beans contain estrogen.

Everything was great!

The idea here is a kind of bridging of Western food themes – like pasta, hamburger patties, and sandwiches – with more traditional Japanese tastes. It's called Yoshoku-style cuisine, and it's apparently all the rage in Japan these days. Here too, in my mind. I'm impressed. I'd stay away from the "ketchup-based" spaghetti sauces, but Wayway's fish egg pasta, with its soy sauce and garlic based sauce, was excellent.

And there are lots of other interesting sounding, bridgey choices, including au gratin rice dishes and something called "pizza toast."

Pizza toast.

I have been to see the endocrinologist.

On the Bridge. 1581 Webster, Ste. 205 (at Post), SF. (415) 922-7765. Daily, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Takeout available. Beer and wine. Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.

Email Dan Leone

Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).