raji

Haven't been personally, but heard here is not bad: http://www.tirnanognyc.com/

Are you Julian Schnabel. If not, I wouldn't suggest it...

You said within the last year, so I didn't answer. I HAVE been as recently as last year. It's great - it will be the best ishiyaki wagyu you can get in town, sashimi courses all rock solid, strong kaiseki dishes. It's just not as luxe as Masa and not considered groundbreaking anymore, so in a sense, but sometimes you want more mainstream Japanese food executed extremely well. But do report back.

What a great category! Okonomiyaki is probably my favorite Japanese food. What I make at home is better than any restaurant. In Japan, there are monjya- and okonomiyaki restaurants everywhere. They are referred to as TEPPANYAKI restaurants. Some are teppans with a bar and table, and the chefs man the teppan and grill meats and veggies which may or may not be incorporated into your MONJYA or okonomiyaki. Most, however, are teppanyaki where the teppan IS your table. The staff comes by, starts grilling your meats and mixes your batter, and then usually leaves it to you to cook and eat it. By the way, Monjya is a runnier version of okonomiyaki and specific to the KANTO plane, if you want to make fun of someone from Tokyo, as if you were from Osaka, you call them a MONJYA-eating something or other. It's funny because more than anything, monjya resembles vomit.

I don't get perverse thrills out of restaurant closings like Eater.com does (and indeed their thrills are about to skyrocket tenfold with the economy sufficiently fux0red), but when I got home last night I found that I had proclaimed death to a few of you last night, meanwhile it was happening for real... "A year and a half after its initial debut, the deathwatched (and almost shitshow) Wakiya, sweet, sweet, Wakiya, is closing its doors. According to a release today, Ian Schrager and chef Yuji Wakiya's failed project will close on December 21 due to Chef Wakiya's 'longstanding commitments in Japan.'" That means the only wafu-chuuka deal in town is Saburi - who are friends of mine, and just renewed their lease for another 2 years - I have advised them (and they're listening) to go RAMEN and GYOZA - these are chinese imports after all.. and offer an evening IZAKAYA menu... is there anything else any of you would really like to see on their menu?

How about their humongous daily/weekly specials menu? That's always changing. Notice anything?? Ordering off of that is as good as putting together your own kaiseki....

Oh yeah, you can read this masochist, but I'm not sure if you wanna go there.... http://midtownlunch.com/ And yes, I live in Manhattan, and this is how...

jinx.

I've been known to stretch my daily budget, by necessity or to be able to afford a luxe meal once in a while. Obviously you want to try to do mostly big lunches but most of the places I mention it doesn't matter lunch or dinner - - Slice in midtown, Bella Napoli is not bad - Pizza @ John's on 44th & 7th - Bistro burger @ Corner Bistro, $6.50, drafts $2.50, bartender is a rabid Mets fan - Al-Halal carts - they're cheaper outside of midtown, $4 or $5 instead of $6, chicken over rice - South Indian buffets on Lexington in the 20s, always less than $10 - OmsB rice ball lunch special, 3 for like $7 - Tehuitzingo and Tulcingo del Valle, tacos for $2 or $2.50, best you can do - Falafel, sahara grill, Azuri - 32nd Street, Gah Mee Ohk, Soh Lung TAng, and you get cabbage, jalapenos and miso to chomp with that, $8.95 - ramen at Menchanktei, menkuitei in midtown - Donburi lunches at Donburiya or Cafe Zaiya - Mee Noodle Shop - Pizza @ Lazzaras Chinatown is always cheap - do NY Noodletown roast duck over rice - There are carts on canal doing various grilled rice cakes and noodle dishes - Big Wong - Dumpling House Midtown can suck, proceed east or west from times square, do not pass go There's no place I'd rather be broke in America than NYC because you can eat very very well for very very little money, it's not like you're eating out of the 7-11 That's off the top of my head lemme know if you need more. You should define a budget if you want help on here tho.

LOL Sakagura's coat check gal just left my place early morning... we're friends and I was helping her drink her way through her jetlag.... good job on the BETSU-BARA (2nd stomach) What's new at AK? I owe them a visit, haven't been there in a minute...

There's tons of great restaurants on 9th avenue. It's considered the "international" row of Manhattan. You said "no ethnic", so can you define ethnic for us? Non-european? Non-American?

Oh yeah LPS, you want IH IH Rice Cooker The heating method known as Induction Heating (IH) occurs when a magnetic material is placed in a magnetic field. In our case, coils within the bottom of the rice cooker create the magnetic field. When the special 2 ply inner cooking pan (nonstick coated aluminum with stainless steel outer lining) is placed into the rice cooker and the unit is turned on, a magnetic field is generated to create instant heat. Through this technology, the whole inner cooking pan itself becomes the heat source utilizing both high heat and finely tuned heat adjustments to control the cooking process. The results? Higher and quicker heat response that's more evenly distributed for perfectly cooked rice every time!

There's 2 IH (Induction Heating) Tiger Rice Cookers on sale, 350 and 370 for 5.5 and 10 cup, and Zojirushi for 270 and 280, the fuzzy logic ones are all between 100 and 200, the Sanyo fuzzy logic 3.5 cup that I bought in japan for $90 3 years ago is $120 on sale. The Sanyo nabe/shabushabu/sukiyaki/yakiniku set is only 100 and it comes with a free takoyaki plate as a promotion. I want the takoyaki plate so if anyone wants to buy the Sanyo, I'll buy the takoyaki plate for $20 or $30 off of you... Oh yeah and they're doing the the UMAIMONO fair again next weekend, Otafuku will be making okonomiyaki (I learned a thing or two from them altho they were making Osaka-style) and then a bunch of japanese dessert fair demos, the kind of desserts you find at fall matsuri in japan My brother had a chashuu shioramen and I had the chashuu shoyuramen at Santouka. $20 even all in. Let me tell you, all 3 of those are the reliably best you will find in the northeast because Santouka simply maintains a very consistent high level of quality, high turnover, and enhances an already KILLER tare featuring bits of porkfat and marrow which you can see with the naked eye with your choice of salt, miso, or soy sauce. Naruto and 5 or 6 wide thick slices of pork belly. Big brother raji proclaimed it the second best ramen he's ever had, but that's cuz he visited me once in Tokyo

I'm going to Mitsuwa tonight, any requests? BTW the current sale is an appliance sale, so it's about time you get a fuzzy logic rice cooker and a multi-cooker, it's getting to be shabu-shabu/sukiyaki/nabe weather!

But that's the exact contention that we are holding in doubt. The proof is in the pudding and while they might have more of a solid grasp on NY Japanese restaurants than most people, they certain don't have a more solid grasp than most people on here, and we're not (all) publishing books... I'm not going to defend the more xenophobic of the Japanese natives and diaspora, but, you have to realize, the vast majority of Japanese food outside of Japan is found as - - Sushi bars featuring California and NY rolls and spicy tuna temaki, which are not only not Japanese, but they're not even remotely popular IN Japan - Teppanyaki which was for the most part post-war theater for the cownivorous occupation forces and later an invention of Rocky Aoki - Teriyaki, sukiyaki and the like which are cane sugar and corn syrupped-up distant cousins of real japanese dishes and the list goes on and on. Even in major cities all over the world I see this. It's very rare for a non-Japanese to have sought out and found authentic Japanese food consistently outside of Japan; I have to deal with this sort of skepticism all the time. Japanese language ability is the ultimate filter, as usually only the Japanese-run places advertise in the local jp-language papers, so weeding out the fakes is a good start, then you have to ask around and try out to find out the actual good places. Anyway, it's much harder if you don't personally speak/read Japanese or have a friend who does. But I don't feel like the michelin reviewers did any such work and seem to be far more impressionable. And a lot of japanese food is not instantly accessibly and I feel like only those that ARE are getting coverage. That goes back to that "getting it" quotient, but think about it, didn't sushi make a lot more sense after eating it a few times?

A close second would be Perry Street, which, with the weather how it is, I'd opt for, given the view from that minimalist room plus the convenience of getting back to the Piers at 50th street, which is probably where you're disembarking. (Well OK the convenience is negligible but even getting from CPW to WSH can be sucky)

Just to be clear why I'm not offended by that remark, nothing is more bastardized worldwide than Japanese food, and so the general conception is that most non-Japanese, unless they have LIVED in Japan, or another Japanese community like NYC or Sao Paolo, do not "know" Japanese food. And they are right, which is why one of my favorite things to do is to take friends out to REAL Japanese food which exists in NYC. Anyway, clearly if Michelin wanted to solve these problems, they should put me on their payroll.

Sure it's xenophobic. That issue of GOETHE also featured a column by the governor of Tokyo who condemned the guide. Ishihara is a xenophobic right-wing asshole who devotes himself to giving foreigners in Japan a hard time. At the same time, I think the type of people who read this board would rather heard the Brazilian's review of the Brazilian restaurant, and the Japanese review of the Japanese restaurant. That quote about "only Japanese", well, I'm not ethnically Japanese, but I've certainly been accepted in Japanese culinary circles because I am well familiar with their palate and some of their more exotic ingredients

You're more correct than you know. They put out a Tokyo guide. There was an initial rush to buy it, but this was mostly out of Japanese pride, as the fine European guide had shocked the culinary community and declared Tokyo the culinary capitol of the world. There are deeper national pysche-wide reasons for this; there are very few outlets for Japanese pride and nationalism. So the initial sale of 125,000 of the Michelin guides was akin to all the Ichiro jerseys sold even though, in the long run, the Mariners have been sucking wind. In fact, the Michelin ratings sucked so hard that many restaurateurs declined listing because it was a LIABILITY. I know this because I know a lot of restaurateurs in Tokyo. And now I get asked questions about this restaurant or that in Tokyo, just because they were listed in Michelin? Screw that. The best restaurants in Tokyo will never be listed in Michelin. There are some real choice quotes from the Times article: I don't think anyone is going to defend Michelin's coverage Japanese cuisine in NY, because it's indefensible. So the real question is, does Michelin missing the mark on Japanese and perhaps, Asian food as a whole, in New York, mean that they don't get NY as a whole, because Japanese and Asian dining is such a large part of what NY has to offer. I have always felt that Michelin released a Euro-centric guide to NY and the only thing it added to the conversation was their definition of service, of which I don't really care about. I think the only time in it's existence where the thought crossed my mind to refer to it's NY guide was when I met a beautiful girl in Montreal and thought how to entertain her in NYC. As far as I'm concerned, I don't know why they bother to print the guide in English.

I appreciate that you talked to the man and posted here. Well, the fact is, they didn't do just fine. And myself, and probably plenty of people here, seem to "get" it better than their "Japanese inspectors". Maybe the problem is that they brought inspectors in from Japan to help with the NY guide when they should have employed people who are more familiar with Japanese dining in NYC But, bigger picture, the question is the question of whether the Japanese coverage was symptomatic of a larger problem with the Michelin Guide NYC.

What neighborhood?

I don't know who still favors it, it is probably the sushi fan who sees sushi as health food or sustenance, not a special occasion type thing, but seeing JB on the list is kind of like seeing deceased candidates on voter ballots. Seeing it at 1 star complete smacks the list's credibility in the face, unless it's an isolated incident. JB, IF IT EVER was a 1 star restaurant by their criteria, lost that and listing altogether when Shimizu-san left. Sorry tire-people, but BIG FAIL on that one, 3 years in a row isn't it?

I appreciate the vote of confidence, dude; that said, IMO Micheline ne comprend pas la cuisine japonaise! But neither does Bruni!! I don't know if this is a Franco-centric guide, should we expect it to be? But the Japanese influence is an affront to more traditional French. Does this have anything to do with it I don't think there's any denying that the Japanese influence is THE story of the past, oh, 10 years. From Mr. Jean-Georges who draws on it constantly, to Momo* which simply depends on innovation from the Japanese side as much as it depends on inspiration from the Union Square greenmarket.. it's the new French. The Japanese coverage in Michelin is laughable but I expect it to be. If LPShanet could prove his point with another cuisine, then he'd really have match point. A good start is the EMP exclusion, and the exclusion of anything Indian whatsoever in the star range. --slowly backs away--

I think it is the restaurants fault. When the service is terrible, the experience is bad. My meal at EMP was marked by some of the worst service I have ever had in any fine dining restaurant in new york or Paris. ← Yeah that was my attempt at a joke. The service has been pretty amazing everytime I've been there, and I just don't hear of many bad Danny Meyers experiences. Service is his thing.

That said, there are plenty of places to spend more than $450 on dinner in Tokyo, with a very high level of quality and speciality; they're just not on the foodie radar. There are still remnants of the excess of the 80s all over Tokyo and other major cities for that matter.