I still remember the subtle delights from my first trip to Kajitsu back in 2010: the juxtaposition of grilled mochi on raw, flaky layers of lotus root cake, an osechi box full of foods I’d never heard of, let alone tasted. With chef Masato Nishihara’s departure from the restaurant looming, my group of dining pals and I stopped by for a final taste of his food before a new chef (Ryota Ueshima) takes over and Kajitsu moves to Midtown.

The eight-course, $70 Hana tasting:

nagaimo hishimochi (Japanese yam) with spring vegetables and sweet soy gelée

grated kohlrabi soup with grilled gomadofu, karashi, fresh green peppercorn

smoked satoimo (taro) with tofu-yo sauce; Brussels sprout with fukinoto paste; spring scallions with white wood ear mushrooms and mustard miso; kabochafu (pumpkin wheat gluten) with red miso; kaffir lime and lemon grass

simmered young bamboo shoots with artichoke tempura, fava beans, mitsuba (stone parsley), wakame (seaweed)

shredded phyllo-wrapped mugwort nama-fu (wheat gluten) with house-made Worcester sauce; grilled cabbage, arugula sprouts and watermelon radish; snap peas with parsnip puree; sautéed glass noodles, kinugasa mushrooms and leeks in corn husk

steamed rice with chaju mushrooms, yuba, and grilled water chestnuts; nori, sesame, and dashi, with housemade pickles

cherry blossom mochi, salted cherry leaf

matcha with candies

Thanks to my dining companion cheeryvisage for her excellent memory; many of these are only labeled correctly because of her Flickr set.

When compared to the food at other high-end restaurants in the city, the food at Kajitsu can seem austere: an entire dish will be white or yellow, made up almost entirely of white rice or bamboo. No one flavor ever stands out, and even the tempuraed vegetables are tremendously fresh and light. I know that balance is sort of the point of this kind of food, but it can’t be stressed enough how subtle these dishes are, how you might get caught up in conversation and miss the simple perfection of a salted leaf or the smallest slice of peppercorn.

I love Kajitsu for the seasoned eater and the diner who’s never seen a fiddlehead fern in real life alike. The food is artful and exciting in its simplicity. The boxes filled with four different kinds of unrecognized vegetation dazzle the eye, and the dishes served in covered bowls build anticipation. I didn’t once miss the meat during this tasting and instead delighted in knowing that I wasn’t going to run into a single sinew or bone. With this two-Michelin-starred restaurants in town, vegetarians have it pretty good.

When you look up “banh mi” in the Midtown East MenuPages listings, you find Num Pang, a tiny Cambodian sandwich shop started by two friends that’s distinctly not-banh-mi yet nonetheless satisfies every spicy sandwich desire I have.

The menu is about fifteen sandwiches long and four side dishes deep (plus a bunch of soups and salads that I barely notice the existence of due to their health benefits), and my boyfriend and I haven’t tried anything yet that hasn’t left us wishing for one more sandwich to eat and one more side to hold onto like a little family pet that we bathe and take on a walk from time to time.

Here’s a sampling of one of our many orders:

boneless spare ribs

vanity shot

five-spice glazed pork belly

grilled corn on the cob

tropical fruit salad

It begins with the bread from NYC’s Parisi Bakery, which has that perfect crusty exterior yet doesn’t flake away all over your best shirt like a traditional banh mi does. Even when the first bite doesn’t yield any meat, the spicy-sweet chili mayo on the bread is a treat on its own. But the meat–whether it’s the spare ribs or the pork belly or the veal meatballs or the sausage–is always seared on the outside and tender on the inside and made all the more spicy and mouth-watering by the complimentary Sriracha sauce. And if you love a banh mi like I do, you’ll appreciate the familiar cucumber, carrots, and cilantro on every sandwich. Every bite is rich but also bright, familiar yet also distinctly Asian-influenced.

The corn was a complete shock to us, because we were expecting the flavors of Mexican corn-on-the-cob: lime, chili, and cotija cheese. The lime is there, and the chili mayo, but what looks like shredded cheese is actually shredded coconut. Shenanigans! I love cheese, but the sweet with the spicy and the tart is enough goodness to make me change factions.

The fruit salad is whole lychees, slices of pineapple, papaya, and mango, and cubes of young coconut in a lemongrass and mint juice. A few bites of this and a few sips of the blood orange lemonade is the perfect sweet-sour way to counteract the spiciness of the sandwiches. My boyfriend thinks the watermelon juice is better, but don’t listen to him.

I originally planned to give Num Pang 4.5 donuts out of 5 but started to reconsider it once I accidentally saw that both locations get 4 stars when you search for them on Google Maps. I thought through the menu and the meals I’ve had, trying to convince myself of a reason to drop its rating. Is too expensive? No, it’s exactly what I’m used to paying for banh mi. Is it not as flavorful as I expect? No, it’s actually more flavorful than most (if not all) comparable sandwiches. Can I think of anything that would make it better? More meat!, but that’s just me being greedy. I asked my boyfriend for his opinion, and he said, “One word: corn.” And then it became clear that I’m right and Google is wrong. 4.5 donuts it is.

If there’s one thing I love about NYC, it’s that for every diehard fitness fanatic waiting impatiently at the gym’s front door at 6 a.m., there’s a fried pizza fanatic who thinks four pizzas for three people might not be enough food. It used to be that you had to go to Park Slope’s Chipshop for a deep-fried slice, but Forcella took the fried pizza from an outer borough novelty to a full-on Manhattan sensation. Of course I was interested from the words deep-fried and pizza, but it was New York magazine’s article about the new Don Antonio by Starita that made me finally put down my Papa John’s and venture to Midtown:

Just when you thought the market for Neapolitan pizza had reached saturation, along comes Kesté’s Roberto Caporuscio and his old mentor Antonio Starita, who’ve teamed up to open Don Antonio in Hell’s Kitchen next Tuesday, February 7. In certain pizza-world circles, this is huge — like Gennaro Lombardi rising from the grave to sling slices with Dom DeMarco. For the uninitiated, Starita is third-generation pizza royalty. Along with Sophia Loren, his family’s Naples pizzeria starred in the Vittorio De Sica film L’Oro di Napoli. The man has served pizza to popes. He has tomato sauce coursing through his veins. In short, there is nothing about dough he doesn’t know. His student, Caporuscio, the U.S. president of the Association of Neapolitan Pizza Makers, is no slouch either.

How could I resist when my friends The Pretender and Lucy invited me out on a whim one night last week? And luckily, Lucy had her camera on hand to take these glorious photos:

Potato Croquet, Arancini, Fritattine

Henry ordered these three starters–fried potato with homemade mozzarella and bread crumbs, a rice ball, and a spaghetti cake with baked Italian ham and mozzarella–and seemed pleased but not overwhelmingly excited by them. I really wanted a spaghetti cake of my own but knew I was already going to have a hard time finishing the four pizzas we’d ordered.

Margherita S.T.G.

The S.T.G. is for guaranteed typical specialty, the pizza by which to judge all other pizzas. Typical as it may have supposedly been, I was pretty impressed. It needed more basil, but the sauce–which seemed a weak tomato-only puree at first glance–was somehow extremely flavorful. The crust was this perfect not-too-burnt-and-crispy, almost-chewy texture, bready enough and airy enough to please everyone.

Montanara Starita

Despite the similar toppings, the fried pizza was wildly different from the S.T.G. Every bite was noticeably smoky, and well, the crust was something special: crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, like a funnel cake or a French fry. And with that specific French fry/funnel cake soaked-through-with-oil-ness. It’s a magical mix of frying and oven-baking, and it was my favourite of the four.

Racchetta

It’s shaped like a racquet! And the handle is full of cheese! And is a big disappointment!

Overall, this pizza was awesome, and I say that as someone who barely like vegetables on pizza at all, especially when those vegetables are mushrooms (half-blergh!) and tomatoes (double-blergh!). But these vegetables were cooked down so flavorfully and lent a level of heartiness to the pizza that meats don’t. The disappointment was in the handle, which was lightly stuffed with creamy ricotta cheese and should have been the best stuffed breadstick ever but was just sort of okay–not quite flavorful enough and not quite cheesy enough. I need some oregano stuffed into that sucker.

Vesuvio

With ricotta, mozzarella, and salami stuffed inside the crust and Italian ham, mushrooms, and basil on top, this is the pizza you order if you want to fill up on just one. We made the mistake of saving it for last and only ate half of it, because each piece feels like two. The spice of the salami contrasted the sweetness of the ham, and the cheese spilling out of the center made it a messy fork-and-knife feast.

I had my first taste of the famous/infamous Sprinkles cupcake last year in their homeland of California when my boyfriend’s sister brought an anniversary cupcake cake to his parents’ party. My cupcake was yellow cake with chocolate frosting and a pink block letter of questionable edibility that seemed to be made of sugar but refused to melt in my mouth.

Hardcore New Yorkers will stand loyally behind their Magnolia Bakery cupcakes, but I prefer the much more elaborate/gluttonous cupcakes from Crumbs Bake Shop and really only go to Magnolia for the banana pudding, so I was completely open to trying Sprinkles. And it was fine. Not life-changing. Not make-me-move-to-California-immediately-ing. But fine.

Well, my friend Kim got a coupon to try four free Sprinkles cupcakes at the first NYC location in the Upper East Side, because she is the princess of New York City, and she invited me to try them with her, knowing that I’d insist on buying a couple more. The employees are very nice, and the store is veeeeery cute, with the trademark Sprinkles dots decorating the outside, bright colors everywhere, and enough low tables with corresponding ottomans that we didn’t feel any pressure to move for the couple of hours we sat there.

The cupcakes were still fine.

peanut butter chip

salty caramel

black and white

cinnamon sugar

My only complaint about Crumbs is that I feel like they spend so much time working on the filling and toppings that they forget to care about the cake; it usually tastes a couple of days old. My complaint about Magnolia is that it’s too simple; I can and have made their cupcakes at home myself. Sprinkles hits a nice balance between quality cake and quality toppings. The cake was fresh and moist, and the frostings and accoutrements were all creative. In the end, though, I missed the way Crumbs fills the cake with a dollop of frosting, and I missed the sheer size of the Crumbs cupcake. Sprinkles is good for people who want to splurge without bursting their bellies, and that ain’t me.

There’s one reason I might choose Sprinkles over Crumbs in the future, though. The drinking chocolate:

It’s bittersweet Belgian chocolate with a vanilla bean marshmallow, so rich and dense you feel like you’re wearing a mouthguard of hot chocolate when you’re finished with it. The marshmallow was so thick that it lasted almost to the end of the cup, making each sip creamy and flavorful.

A good review can entice me to eat almost anything. David Bouley’s Brushstroke, with its very traditional and structured Japanese menu, isn’t exactly a comfort food haven for this corn-fed Ohio diner, but Adam Platt’s New York magazine review somehow had me craving kaiseki. Partly because I liked that they wouldn’t let him order sushi in the dining room and partly because there’s no way I’m resisting a restaurant once I see the words candied duck breast in a review.

the book room

Brushstroke is all recycled blonde woods, reclaimed steel from ship’s hulls, and 27,000 paperback books formed into walls inset with Japanese street scenes in the bar area. (Apparently these low, cushioned tables are where Platt had to eat his a la carte sushi.) Having read that sitting at the sushi counter was a special experience, my boyfriend and I traded the privacy of a dining room table for up-close sushi-making action. And the best part was that we still had servers, so the chef wasn’t distracted by having to chatter with us, and we could talk quietly to ourselves while we enjoyed his display of skills.

sushi chef forming maki rolls

For our menu, we chose the $135 seasonal tasting:

amuse bouche: persimmon, fig

This bite was a nice balance of sweet fruit and slight heat. The greens were very tender, but out of nowhere came a bit of invisible crunchiness from within the mound of them. The flavor of yuzu in the sauce overwhelmed all of the other elements, but I’m a huge fan of that distinct citrus taste and found it a plus.

steamed chawan-mushi egg custard, dungeness crab, black truffle sauce

A thick layer of creamy custard in the bottom of the bowl was covered with even more broth thick with the crabbiest of crab hunks. It was like chicken noodle soup for pescetarians. The strong crab flavor, crunchy scallions, and pudding-like custard were the main standouts of the dish, while the truffle and ginger were conspicuously absent for me.

As I took the last bite of fish, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “I didn’t take a picture of that.” It was a beautiful plate of expertly-sliced tuna, kampachi (yellowtail), and hirame. The tuna was oddly nearly flavorless, but the hirame was lemony and firm, and the kampachi was meaty and fell apart in my mouth. The tuna was served with soy sauce, while the other two were to be eaten with a super sweet chunky radish and ponzu sauce that was delicious even when eaten by itself. For me, this just didn’t compare to the sashimi plate at Momofuku Ko, in which every piece of fish is outfitted with a distinct yet complementary topping, but I appreciated the simple beauty of it.

guinea hen soup

This soup looked pretty tame when it was placed in front of us, but lurking inside were treasures untold. Namely, a whole chunk of the crispiest, slightly-charred-tasting hen skin. The soup was thin yet somehow creamy and again had the flavor of yuzu, and the golf-ball-sized meatball had a citrus flavor and the very soft texture of a paté. I got the feeling that this fowl would have been very juicy even without the broth.

Pacific oyster

I’m still not BFFs with oysters, so having this one served to me chopped into four pieces was helpful, even if it allowed me way too much freedom to examine the meaty interior. It was very lemony, with a bit of texture from the seaweed underneath. I wouldn’t say it got me any closer to loving oysters, but it sure didn’t take me a step back, and the presentation was really striking to boot.

lobster with kabocha squash (Japanese pumpkin)

I love pumpkin, and kabocha in particular is supposed to be extra sweet, so I was salivating a Slip ‘N Slide out of the corner of my mouth just thinking about popping these squash-sauced niblets of lobster into my mouth. Weirdly, yuzu was once again the main flavor of the dish; we could just barely get any pumpkin flavor. I did like the creaminess of the sauce, though, and the chewiness of the lobster was just right.

rock fish, chrysanthemum petals

This dish was beautiful but freaky. The dashi was exceptionally gelatinous, making it very difficult to eat with chopsticks; I really needed a spoon and some fruit cocktail to make a classic Midwestern Jell-o salad. The dish was kind of one-note, with that note of course being yuzu.

black cod, uni, buckwheat

I don’t ever think a dish needs additional uni, but I actually both thought it worked here and that the dish wouldn’t have been as good without it. There was yuzu in the chrysanthemum puree, naturally, and it paired nicely with the earthy buckwheat. I guess maybe cod is the epitomical fish for me, because its flavor just seemed perfectly oceany.

sake

My boyfriend gets mad when I don’t take any pictures of the drink pairings, so this is for him. Pairings were $90 for the ten courses and ranged from absolutely perfect to slightly questionable, but the sommelier admitted that at least one of the dishes had been exceptionally hard to pair, and it has to be rough pairing a menu that changes monthly, as Brushstroke’s does.

pork belly, cippolini onion puree

I was as ecstatic about this course as I was ambivalent about the fish courses. I kept looking at my boyfriend’s wagyu and telling him my dish was better, but he refused to believe me, and rightly so; there’s no situation where pork is better than beef.

Except for this one.

We joked about it changing our lives once my boyfriend finally tasted it, but I’m not sure either of us were actually joking. The cippolini puree was so sweet and oniony. The sauce tasted of bourbon. The pork was crispy on the outside but tore apart so easily with chopsticks, the thick layer of fat disintegrating instantly. It was so clearly the better of the two meat dishes, and I’m not someone who undervalues steak.

wagyu

Smoky and perfectly-cooked, this beef was tender and complemented by the sweet crunchy vegetal strips on top. And that’s all I remember about it, because I only cared about the pork.

array of sushi

My boyfriend said this was the best pickled ginger he’d ever had, which is kind of a funny thing to notice amidst a plate of expertly-prepared fish, but he has sushi for dinner way more often than I’d like, so I believe him. This was tuna, fluke, mackerel, and yellowtail with a tuna maki roll. Notably, wasabi was already smeared on the rice under each piece of fish.

tuna maki roll

red miso soup

This was one of the chef’s mother’s recipes. And it tasted like miso soup to me, so that’s something.

lobster karaage

As weird as noting the excellence of some ginger is caring more about the pickles on the side of your lobster dish than the lobster itself, but they were just so firm and ripe. The lobster pieces didn’t have noticeable batter, but they tasted deep-fried and were slightly crunchy. The rice was sticky and starchy and tasted of vinegar, which contrasted with the fresh herbs garnishing the dish. It was a filling, warming dish.

pickles

soy sauce ice cream

As if soy sauce ice cream isn’t strange enough on its own, this was topped with groats . . . and wasabi! It was rich, nutty, and salty, with a surprising caramel flavor. I loved the heat from the wasabi, the crunch of the buckwheat, and the salt from the dehydrated soy sauce topping. I would eat this over my usual Ben & Jerry’s any day.

green tea pudding, crushed pistachios

I’m not what you’d call someone who appreciates subtlety. I like my desserts oversized and oversweetened. But this was so creamy, so rich, that I couldn’t help myself. It had a slight flavor of coffee and a slight sweetness from the syrupy brown sugar topping.

Accompanying it were mostly-savory red beans and slivers of chestnut with a little tooth to them.

red beans, puffed rice, chestnut

matcha green tea

A bowl of matcha green tea, extra frothy, washed everything down, and then we were finally served dusted squares of rice paper in a wooden box. I have to admit that I was least-excited about this part of the dessert and had considered eating them before the pudding just to get them out of the way and save the best things for last.

rice paper

But these were the best things. The piece dusted in green tea was super sweet, with the flavor of burnt popcorn. The salty-sweet shiso piece had pine nuts between its thin layers that were soft and flavorful. Both dissolved in my mouth like cotton candy and were gone far too soon, but their intense flavors lingered.

sushi chef cutting tuna

I’ll admit that Brushstroke was a little too timid for me at times. I like my sashimi a little more done-up, my cooked fish a little less one-note. But if kaiseki is all about balance, I have to give the restaurant its due: every dish was seasonal, beautifully-presented, and full of interesting textures. There was so much going on in the kitchen (unlike at, say, Momofuku Ko, where most of the preparation has happened ahead of time, and many dishes are constructed from elements pulled from plastic storage containers), and even more going on in the restroom, which my boyfriend and I had to visit several times to play with the electronic Japanese toilet. (Would it be wrong to give a restaurant an extra donut just for giving me my first bidet experience?) With a menu that changes monthly and the chance to have our butts dried by a toilet, we’ll no doubt be back.