Having reservations somehow makes me feel really cool–despite the fact that only old people plan their meals and that I’d actually be much cooler if I just walked into restaurants on a whim–and I love using OpenTable to book just about any meal I can. While rating my recent wd~50 dinner last week, I saw the OpenTable Diners’ Choice list for the top restaurants fit for foodies and was surprised that I’d never even heard of #1. So naturally, I promptly booked a table for two there for Sunday night.
Kajitsu is a cozy, sparse, underground East Village Japanese den dedicated to shojin cooking, which is the basis for all Japanese cuisine, especially haute cuisine. And it happens to be vegetarian, which is . . . fine. I was vegetarian for several years and think it’s a completely valid lifestyle choice, but I wasn’t sure even an eight-course tasting menu was worth $70.
The first course had me convinced. We didn’t know what any of this was (okay, maybe the carrots), and it was all so exciting. Even things I generally wouldn’t care for, like broccoli not covered in butter and/or melted cheese, seemed more delicious when placed delicately in a lacquered box next to all sorts of unknowns. There were so many highlights I can’t choose just one favourite, but the most delightful bit was probably the two black beans lying atop the chestnut paste on the plate in the back of the box. They were surprisingly sweet, skewered onto what looked like a cherry stem, and covered in a bit of gold leaf. It just goes to show how important plating is.
The real delight in a dish like this is that no matter how freakily eel-like something might have looked, I could just remind myself that it had to be vegetation of some sort, and vegetables don’t scare me. The little novelty ball of white, pink, and green in front was just gelatinous and starchy-tasting, and there was way too much bamboo for my taste, but even then, I appreciated the way they were presented.
Upon first taste, this was a relative disappointment to the first dish, because it was so mild. Upon second taste, I appreciated that we had to really stop and explore each sip of the soup in order to really get the flavor. The top piece of mochi was raw, and the bottom piece was cooked, and their juxtaposition was immense. I don’t really see a need for raw mochi to exist anymore, other than to remind me how much better it is grilled.
This was the closest to what I’d call comfort food, but it was much more delicious than, say, mashed potatoes. The skin on the cake flaked right off into crunchy layers that matched the crunch of the lotus seed and complimented the sweet pickledness of the myoga. The nori provided the base of the cake and a lot of ocean flavor.
I think I was a lot less impressed by the soba than my boyfriend was. I’ve had some really delicious hot soba at Soba Totto near Grand Central, and cold soba just doesn’t compare for me. The texture was wonderfully gritty and made the noodles seem very rustic, but even with the dipping broth and wasabi, they were missing something for me. Perhaps a HUGE HUNK OF BLOODY STEAK.
This was the silkiest, smoothest tofu ever. I still don’t quite understand what ankake is, but it was syrupy and slightly sweet. You can’t go wrong with anything tempura-battered, of course, but the crispy chrysanthemum leaves on top made this special.
Do not be won over so easily by the lily bulb! Yes, it’s beautiful, and yes, it’s unusual, but it doesn’t taste like anything! Fortunately, the rest of the rice did, especially after I soaked it with my miso soup. Which of course made it impossible to eat with chopsticks and thoroughly embarrassed my boyfriend. The real star, though, were the pickled vegetables, which were delicious to a surprising degree. I’m sure kelp would make me slightly squeamish in any other context, but it was so pickley and sweet here.
This was one of the better red bean desserts I’ve had. I sometimes don’t feel like topping a dry pancake with dry bean paste is very pleasing to the throat, but the warm outside skin of this was so moist. Still, as a dessert-lover, I would hardly call this a complete dish. A big, fat scoop of red bean ice cream was entirely necessary, and no amount of cute little red fork can convince me otherwise.
This was another dessert for people who don’t like sweets. I don’t want to say that the Japanese don’t understand the glory of insulin shock, but the lukewarm green tea was creamy and entirely unsweetened, the tiny rakugan domes tasted of plain sugar, and the hard candies didn’t explode in my mouth to reveal a gooey chocolate center or anything. Call me a glutton, but I’d rather have no dessert than two savory courses posing as dessert.
Of course, we also had to try the five-course sake tasting, and the drinks that came with dessert were better than either of the actual plates. My boyfriend got a plum sake, and I got a yuzu sake just to try something different, since I’d usually go for the plum without question. But the yuzu was incredibly sweet, and the plum reminded my boyfriend of a popular Persian soft drink, so we both ended up with what was perfect for each of us. We delighted ourselves by talking about how drunk we were going to be later, but sadly, there was just too much food for us to walk out swaying.
Aside from the dessert, which I’m half-kidding about, my one real criticism overall would be that the dishes in any given course didn’t necessarily seem to go together. None of the flavors ever clashed, exactly, but I now felt like, “Wow, this tofu wouldn’t be the same without those battered mushrooms.” Still, when I think about the dishes that really wowed–the osechi box, the grilled mochi, the lotus root cake–I’m blown away thinking about how simple yet flavorful they were. If a meat-filled tasting menu in this town is $125-$150, then $70 for all of this new-to-me deliciousness is more than worth it. The fact that I only missed meat in exactly one dish seems like a major accomplishment.
I really love when a restaurant inspires huge reactions from my friends, especially when they rely on me to choose the restaurant for us. To my delight, they kept talking about our Friday night trip to Mama’s Food Shop in the East Village for days. Unfortunately, no one was saying anything good.
Eating at one of Mama’s tables feels like eating at the apartment of one of your most eclectic hipster friends if you have the sort of friends who keep nude pictures of their mothers on bookshelves at the heads of their tables. And if your friend serves you lukewarm comfort food cafeteria-style from metal pans.
I was there for the bacon-wrapped meatloaf, and it didn’t disappoint. It had a homey, small-batch taste and pulled apart easily with my fork. The macaroni was plenty cheesy but underseasoned, and I probably would’ve rather had a box of Kraft at home. The kind with the orange cheesefood that squeezes out of the pouch.
My friends had the fried chicken and thought it was bland, but that didn’t stop Chantee from making this face when I asked her to pose:
As a lover of big, soft French fries, I thought my friends’ sweet potato fries were delicious, but most of the plate sat uneaten by everyone else:
However, my pile of banana cream pie (sans crust) was so attractive to everyone
that when I turned to get a photo of something else, two friends dove for a bite at the same time and ended up losing it on the table
so it spent the remainder of the meal beside me on the bookshelf, next to one of the naked ladies.
I didn’t think anyone was horrified by it at the time, but when I asked my friends individually later if they’d return, every one of them said no due to the temperature of the food. I, ever the optimist, chalk that up to our arriving mere minutes before they were closing (although when you’re dishing up pre-cooked food on a serving line, probably the least you can do is serve it hot).
Aside from that, I thought everything tasted just like someone’s mama would make it, and I definitely loved the idea of it:
• You get to see exactly what the food looks like before you order it (great for your picky friends) • No tipping a waiter (great for your cheap friends) • A whole lot of food (great for your gluttonous friends)
My boyfriend got a sudden urge for a tasting menu last week, so I posted to Chowhound seeking a menu without much seafood to suit me. Someone suggested Degustation, where we’ve been meaning to go anyway, and even though the restaurant has no website of its own to post a menu on, other people’s reviews seemed to suggest the place was right up my alley.
It’s basically located in an alley, so we almost missed it, and then when the friendly hostess came to greet us, it turned out we weren’t on their reservation list. I chalked it up to the unpleasant telephone exchange I’d had with the reservationist the day before in which I supposedly mispronounced the name of the place, but then the hostess asked, “Is the reservation for day-gus-TAY-shun or our sister restaurant, Jewel Bako?” After I finished mentally rejoicing that someone who actually works there pronounces it the same way I did, another employee came over and led us to our seats, even though it was clear we didn’t have a reservation. So A+ to the restaurant staff for clearing up the issue, and F- to reservationist for mucking up my self-esteem and my good name (kidding).
We loved the set-up of Degustation. The 16-seat wooden bar makes a half-rectangle around the kitchen so that you can see your food being prepared and the chef can watch you enjoying it. The diners were a mix of young couples like ourselves who were all ordering the 10-course tasting menu and older couples who had obviously been there before and were enjoying glass after glass of wine. The couple next to me seemed to order every single dish on the menu, and I only noticed because the old man kept punching me in the side with his elbow and cutting his meat with his arm all up in my business, and I was dying for them to leave. Of course I assumed he was mistreating me because he knew I was too poor to be eating there, but I tried to keep my paranoia in check.
Our amuse-bouche was a croquet of corn and pork and a tortilla folded around a nearly-raw quail egg over shallot jam. The croquet was a little too mushy inside, but the shell was perfectly crisp, and corn can do no wrong in my book. I made the mistake of not eating the tortilla in one bite, so the egg leaked out all over my plate, but it gave me a better chance to mix it into the very complimentary shallot jam.
Our first course was a chilled almond soup with champagne grapes and raw almonds. The combination of grapes and almonds was even better than I expected, and as someone who doesn’t care for the texture of almonds, I loved being able to experience the flavor without finding nut bits in my teeth for hours afterward.
Our second course was broccoli rabe two ways with parmesan broth and pineapple foam. The fried rabe was probably the best preparation I’ve ever tasted, but it kept getting soft in the parmesan broth before I could get it into my mouth. The pineapple foam was delicious and inventive, but Kamran didn’t think it mixed well with the broth.
The third course was a heirloom tomato summer salad with basil, egg vinaigrette, and a hunk of pork. Tomatoes are the one food I absolutely can’t bear to eat, so I was extremely disappointed to see an entire course centered on them. When the server asked if I was allergic to anything, I should have just told her I can’t eat tomatoes and bypassed the whole thing, but I thought I could tough out anything they brought me. Kamran told me that his tasted sweet, so I tried a bite of each of the five kinds on my plate, but it took everything I had not to make disgusted faces. He tasted some of mine and agreed that they weren’t as good as his. Luckily, I love basil, and the pork was done really, really well, with an extra-crispy skin.
The fourth course was smoked sea trout with red onions and scallion cream cheese. I don’t generally like fish, but I can eat raw salmon, and this reminded me a lot of that. I didn’t notice the smoky flavor until Kamran pointed it out to me, but the onions were a great addition, as were these tiny green cubes of something incredibly spicy. We couldn’t name them, but we loved them.
The couple around the corner of the bar from us were one course ahead of us, so I knew ahead of time that sardines were coming. When it comes to fish–and especially the very last kind of fish I’d ever eat if given a choice–having more time to prepare myself for it isn’t the way to go. Knowing what was coming, I kept asking questions about it to Kamran, who could do nothing to assuage my extreme horror at the idea of having to eat fish skin. Let me just show you the picture so you’ll have an idea of how gross this plate looked.
I was even more horrified when ol’ Jabby Elbow next to me asked if he and his wife could have the sardines off the menu. “We just love sardines!” the woman said. The server told them the dish was only part of the 10-course tasting menu, so as much as I wanted to slide my plate over to them, I reveled in the fact that I had something they couldn’t have.
The first preparation was pickled with a sort of tartar sauce underneath. The taste of it didn’t bother me all that much, honestly, but I just couldn’t get past the slippery skin. Seeing the shiny silver was bad enough, but feeling it slide across my tongue was just awful. I had to give it to Kamran, who told me he’d buy me ice cream later just for trying it.
The second was fried with pickled onions, and it was the best of the three for me, simply because it didn’t look like fish.
But to be honest, the grilled piece actually tasted the best. I love the taste of blackened anything, so it really helped me enjoy the fish. As much as I could ever hope to enjoy a sardine, I mean. (My friend the bachelor girl tells me that she actually likes sardines, though, so it’s not just old people.)
I was very much bored of fish at this point, and the next dish only made it worse. It was a skin-on dorade with matsutake mushrooms and dashi broth. The fish seemed to be cooked well and all, but the dish was just plain boring. It looked bland, and it tasted bland.
I was really looking forward to the seventh course simply because I’ve always wanted to eat something out of a hollow egg. We’d seen a carton of eggshells with their tops cut off sitting on a high shelf above the chef and were excited about the possibility of being served something in them, and what we got was more interesting than I had expected.
It was a duck egg custard with maple syrup, brioche, and bacon. The custard was a little thin, but the sweetness of the maple syrup with it was really nice, as was the crunchiness of the brioche. The dish itself was just good, but the presentation of the egg in a bowl of salt was great.
The eighth course was the first one that really left me impressed. It was chicken confit on toasted bread with a smear of curry and a salad of watercress, celery, and huckleberries. Neither of us had ever had huckleberries, so that was exciting in itself, but the chicken confit was exactly what I’d needed all night. It was comfort food, but the curry and the confit preparation added an exciting twist.
I was just watching something the other day where a chef complained about how sweetbreads are always fried and how he’d like to see them grilled just once, but it turns out there’s a reason they’re always fried. Grilled sweetbreads are like a glob of gelatin with a bit of organ flavor.
If that doesn’t convince you, let me give you a nice close-up.
Now, I had sweetbreads at wd~50 and was blown away by how surprisingly pleasant they were, but this would’ve been a much better dish had it just been the summer corn, the tomatillo salsa, and the delfino, a wonderful herb that we’d never even heard of. But it wasn’t.
Thank god the dessert was amazing. I was extremely disappointed when I heard the server tell another patron that their dessert menu consisted of exactly one item, a caramelized torija. I didn’t know what a torija was, but I knew it wouldn’t interest me. It turns out, though, that you only need one dessert when it’s this good.
It was a hunk of bread, torched until golden on the outside and left doughy on the inside, served with three kinds of berries. It was DELICIOUS. And I’m not the sort of person who thinks chocolateless, ice-creamless desserts are delicious. It was definitely the highlight of the meal, Kamran and I both agreed. One of the servers asked us how we liked it, and when we made gurgling sounds of appreciation, she told us that a couple in the night before had ordered one round of the dessert, then another, then another. And when he requested thirds, the man said, “Make mine a double.” That’s how good it is.
We consider Degustation an experience that we’re glad we had, but it just doesn’t compare to our dinner at craft or wd~50. We think part of the problem might have been that everyone hyped it so much to us that our expectations were too high. We also think that the overabundance of seafood was a problem, and I’m sure that had I asked, they would’ve prepared something else for me. (Or just given me four of those wonderful desserts.)
The tasting menu is a value, though, undoubtedly. For $75 each, we got 10 courses of good food with a couple of great moments in a unique atmosphere. I wouldn’t necessarily go back myself, but I’d certainly recommend it to others as a one-time experience. Plus, it gave me the chance to write my first half-negative review, which is pretty exciting.
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.
If I was to tell you there’s a sandwich shop on 14th Street called Thai Me Up, which of the following would you think?:
1) Heeeeeeeeeee. 2) Laaaaaaaaaame. 3) Grooooooooooss. 4) A combination of 2 and 3.
I appreciate a good pun as much as you do, but what if I told you the store is owned by this guy and his hair?:
And what if I told you that the ingredients in one of the dessert drinks is magic?
And what if I told you the website says, “Thai Me Up Sandwich Bar opened in march of 2007 to rave reviews from visitors loving its delicious dishes and fun, sexy concept”? That’s right. Fun, sexy sandwiches.
I haven’t actually stopped at Thai Me Up yet, but in light of this, I really can’t wait to go have an extra-firm-tofu-induced orgasm.
