How do you like a restaurant even before you ordered the food? For me, by playing Runaway by Bon Jovi then followed by Always and Wanted Dead or Alive. How frakkin’ cool is this place?

My family were having lunch before going to the Buddhist Temple for Chinese New Year. My sister, Bonnie, took us here because I had a craving for soupy noodles.

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24 HOUR SAKE BAR!!! KNOW WHAT WE CAN BE DOING AT 6AM ON A MONDAY MORNING?! SAKE!! Thats what I told my friend Matt when I found out Haru Hana, a 24 hour sake bar, was opening soon near our work. After coming back from the holidays, on my way to get lunch at Woo Ri Jip, I noticed Haru Hana was opened. I quickly ran back to the office after getting my lunch of course to tell Matt. I believe it was the next day that I IM’ed him to ask, “lunch?” he said sure but where? I replied “24 sake bar of course!”

*Note, I don’t see the sign that says “24 hours” anymore and can’t really find any info if it’s still is “24 hours” so maybe its no longer “24 hours”.

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I just love anything thats Japanese. Anime, crazy tv shows, culture, technology, and of course food. Japanese chicken wings or tebasaki is pretty famous in Nagoya, Japan. My first exposure to these tasty chicken wings was at Furabio. They were sticky, sweet and covered in sesame seeds.

Few years ago, I had lunch with a friend. She brought me to Tebaya, a tiny shop that specializes in tebasaki. They also sell yummie sandwiches. I remember it being quite good so last last Friday I had lunch with my friend, Steph. She works close to Tebaya so that was another reason why I wanted to go there.

I was excited to go there because I wanted to try the cream crab croquette sandwich. When I walked up to the counter I was ready to order that sandwich in a combo that came with 2 wings, a salad and a drink. Sadly the lady told me they don’t make that anymore so I ended up get the same combo but with a fried fish sandwich.

We had to wait a bit for our lunches. The salad was just your typical Japanese salad and it was a bit sad looking. The sandwich looked pretty big but it was mostly bun. The piece of fried fish was a little too thin. But the bread was great. I really love Asian bread, they tend to be on the chewier side. The wings were pretty good as well.

Overall it seemed everything was okay. I remembered loving the place the first time. I’ll probably go back again for their sandwiches, love love the bread.

- Tebaya 144 W. 19th St New York

I think Menkui Tei in the East Village deserves more press. They might not have the best ramen in town or have an extensive menu or a drunken happy atmosphere but you know what, does that matter? They do churn out consistently good dishes. I have not had one single bad meal there nor bad experience. A lot of things change in the East Village. Over the 6 years that I’ve been here in NYC I have seen bars come and go, what was once a dominant Japanese dining area is now half Japan town and half Korea town. It’s comforting to know that whenever I go to Menkui Tei, I’ll get a good meal. Though Minca is still my to-go spot for ramen, Menkui Tei is Steph’s, my friend, favorite place for ramen.
My favorite dish to eat from here is the Oyakodon. Chicken and egg cooked in dashi over steamy rice! Add a dash of hot pepper and you’re set. Such a great cold winter night dish.

- Menkui Tei 63 Cooper Sq, New York

So I love burgers but I also love anything Japanese. As some of you may know I like to decorate many food items with Japanese mayo and nori flakes, french fries, bacon wrapped dog and even scrambled eggs. So I was super excited when I first heard about Marked5. Combining Japanese flavors with burgers, gimme gimme. While going through their website and tweets, I found that sometimes they offer special sandwiches. Lucky for me, on the day that I went to Marked5 they had both their specials, a salmon burger with wasabi sauce and a spam and egg sandwich. Tran, from Marked5, was nice to enough to chat with us and explained the menu to us. I wanted to try everything because I wanted to, well you know for research. I ordered the torakku beef, katsu pork and the special spam and egg.
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As a vegetarian I’ve had a lot of tofu in my life. Some of it has been very good, some of it has been very bad, but it’s hard to tell how tofu is going to be until you eat it. When I saw that SeriousEats was giving away a pair of tickets to a tofu making demonstration at En Japanese Brasserie, I was intrigued. To enter the contest you had to write a haiku about tofu, so I submitted the following “masterpiece”:

people say “tofu”
like it’s a curse or bad word
have they eaten it?

I didn’t expect to win, so I promptly forgot about it. Then late Friday night I got a congratulatory email from SeriousEats, which left me scrambling to change my work schedule and to find a second person to join me at the last minute for a class on tofu.

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