The New York magazine review of Otafuku says, “It’s very rare to find this stuff in New York. Consider yourself lucky.” Similarly, my boyfriend has been going on about this place for the entire nearly-three years I’ve known him. He went there on a date with a girl before my time and claims that while the date sucked, the food was life-changing. I don’t actually believe him about the date, but I was at least interested in the food.

Otafuku is not a restaurant. It’s a hallway divided in two by a counter, with men cooking on one side and customers ordering on the other. There’s enough room for four people to line up inside to place their orders, and after getting a receipt with a number on it, everyone goes to stand around outside. The pub next door has outdoor garden seating where people are reclining and relaxing, but Otafuku customers get nothing but a single, constantly-full two-seater bench out front. But no one’s complaining.

I don’t like the fruits of the sea, but Kamran tried to sell me on the fact that this is basically junk food, and I’ll admit that I bought it a little bit. There are three things on the menu here:

• Okonomiyaki: a pile of cabbage and batter molded into the shape of a pancake, fried with scallion and ginger, topped with squid, shrimp, pork, beef, or corn, and covered in okonomiyaki sauce, mayonnaise, and seaweed.

• Takoyaki: savory doughnut holes!, covered in okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise!, with a chunk of octopus, a squirt of cheese, or nothing inside, and bonito flakes (dried, fermented, and smoked tuna) on top.

• Yakisoba: fried noodles not worth talking about because there’s no batter involved.

I was especially down with the Japanese junk food when I was able to order the okonomiyaki with pork instead of squid, but the cashier told us they were too busy to make anything but the octopus takoyaki, so I let Kamran get that with the promise that I’d try one of the six dough balls. Twenty minutes later, we were standing outside with our friends and a crowd of other hungry customers when the cook yelled our number out the window and everyone else repeated it until we came forward.

We took our treats to the yard of St. Mark’s Church on 10th St. and dug in. The okonomiyaki tastes pretty much exactly how you expect it to–like fried cabbage, ginger, bacon, BBQ sauce, and mayo. Only it’s not like eating heavy American junk food that makes your pores oil up and your stomach bloat; with this stuff, you somehow feel as if you’ve just eaten something healthy. If you like the taste of cabbage, this thing will totally delight you. If you don’t, get it anyway and peel the pork off the top, because you can’t go wrong with bacon and BBQ sauce.

You don’t feel healthy with the takoyaki. It’s seriously a mouthful of soft, chewy doughnut. And not a fluffy doughnut, either, but an extremely dense one. Despite the fact that I’ve had takoyaki before with little squeamishness, I made Kamran eat the chunk of octopus from mine so I could have just the slightly-fishy shell. Back when I had takoyaki the first time, Kamran had been force-feeding me all sorts of fish to try to acclimate me, but he’s let his efforts slacken lately, and I’m back to being weirded out by seafood. I can’t imagine how good that little ball of fried dough would’ve been had it been filled with cheese.

This isn’t anywhere close to American comfort food, but it was a great experience, and I do consider myself lucky for having tried it, as New York magazine said I should. It was lots of interesting food at a great price, and not having a place to sit down with it was half the fun.

Kamran and I arrived at last year’s Big Apple Barbecue in Madison Square Park just as it was closing down. We got free leftover Snapple and ate cheeseburgers at Shake Shack. It was a lovely time but sadly barbequeless.

This year, we planned a little better and decided to go on Sunday when there was a better chance of rain and therefore a better chance that all of the less-barbeque-fanatic types would opt to stay home. We found the menus of each of the 15 pitmasters, bookmarked guides to the best of the festival on our BlackBerrys, and decided to arrive halfway between the lunchtime and dinnertime rushes.

What we found when we arrived was total chaos. The lines stretched for blocks, every last inch of ground was covered either by someone eating barbeque or someone’s sauce-covered trash, and our BlackBerry bookmarks suddenly wouldn’t load. We headed for the information booth and found a map, recognized a couple of names from the guides, and decided to narrow our feasting down to two pitmasters.

We headed toward the tent for Big Bob’s, but the line was so long that we lost track of it halfway back. We found what looked to be the end of something and asked the people there which vendor they were waiting in line for. “We’re not sure,” they said. But we decided that no matter which line we were in, we were going to get barbeque, and that’s all we cared about.

A giant truck and trailor beside us pumped Santogold and Vampire Weekend while people attempted to pitch metal rings into a bucket in order to win mini footballs. Men pushing trash carts blew whistles to get our attention before they ran us over. Local politicians shook hands and passed out color brochures requesting our votes.

It would’ve been, you know, not totally miserable had there been any end in sight. And with long lines come all of the people willing to do anything to get at the front of them. An old man appeared to Kamran’s right and stayed there, sort of hovering between us and the people behind us and if to confuse one of us into thinking he was legitimately with the other. We learned the best way to stand to discourage people from wanting to cross through the line using the space in front of us.

These people want some BBQ!

After fifty minutes, we were finally to the portion of the line that was actually stanchioned off, and we felt like we were safe. But just then, this man in a green t-shirt somehow got in front of us and seemed to be talking on his cellphone just to avoid a confrontation when we got brave enough to call him out on being a line-cutter. Kamran did this slick little shoulder maneuver that got us in front of him, but then he excused himself and pushed ahead of us. I was about ready to bust out my shiv, but the guy ducked under the stanchion and joined a group of people holding a bulldog puppy. A few minutes later, the guy somehow ended up with a plate of barbeque while we still waited in line.

Totally intense line craziness and that jerk in the green shirt on the left.

We reached the tent and paid, but juuuuust as it was our turn to get a sandwich, the pan of barbeque ran out, and the man scooping pork parts held us up. While we waited, he gnawed on the super-spice-infused burnt bark and didn’t offer any to us, even though it’s obviously the best part. When the pitmaster brought him a new tray of chopped shoulder, he tried to pour the bark into the new dish, but the pitmaster said it wasn’t fresh enough and threw it away. Which both impressed me and made me sad.

Blurry Pitmaster Chris Lilly with Dana Cowin, who we nerdily recognized from an episode of “Top Chef”.

With our pulled pork sandwiches and our sides of coleslaw finally in hand, we decided there was absolutely no way we were going to stand in line at any of the other stands and scuttled away as quickly as we could to a quiet side street to gobble. In the end, our sandwiches with half white sauce and half traditional BBQ sauce were delicious, but having been to another barbeque joint that Friday night, we couldn’t help but think that sitting down and not having to wait an hour for a sandwich far outweighed any extra tastiness that pork might have had. And we’re not sure it actually had any extra tastiness, anyway.

BBQ Bliss

In defense of the Big Apple Barbecue, my friend Ash arrived right at start time on Sunday morning and said she was able to get quite a sampling of pig before the lines got crazy. And they do offer a fast pass that lets you skip the line . . . for $100 per person. I like that each vendor only sold one type of pork and one side, and I like that they did a great job of giving each tent the same sort of sign telling what was on their menu and how much it cost. However, maybe next year the workers with purple flags on tall poles who were supposed to be marking the end of each line could stop chatting with the crowd and actually mark the ends of the lines, ifyouknowhatImean.

Not that I’ll be there to see it, since Kamran and I have agreed to treat each other to a nice sit-down dinner at any of the local barbeques next year instead.