Takashi

Anthony Bourdain's visit to Takashi seems to have made a decent impact on this Japanese and Korean grilling restaurant.  Takashi specializes in grilling meats of the offal kind. This literally no reservations restaurant has an average wait of 2 hours for dinner plus they ran out of the one dish I had my heart set on - the raw beef with uni (niku uni)

A couple small dishes ("panchan") are set on the table to start off the meal: kimchee, marinated beansprouts, and cabbage with a miso-vinegar type dressing.  Its not like other Korean restaurants that serve unlimited panchan dishes - this one costs $2 to refill.

Gorgeously presented, the yokke is made of raw beef, sesame seeds, seaweed and then mixed tableside with a raw quail egg.  An Asian take on beef tartare.  Really more pleasing to the eye, than anything exciting on the palate.  The meat was fresh, but had a couple chewy, stringy pieces.

All mixed up.

Its been a little over a year since my fois rampage (see post HERE) so I was a little excited to see a fois burger on the menu.  Unexpected.  It was more of a small patty in a tiny cast iron pan with a quail egg.  The chocolate sauce was not as weird as I thought it would be, but it was definitely chocolatey.  Somehow the sweetness of the chocolate sauce worked with the sweetness of the fois.  The quail egg, on the other hand, was a little misplaced and straddled the line of too cooked to be runny and to runny to be cooked so it ended up just sticking to the pan. 

A dipping sauce of sesame seeds and some sesame oil are provided for dipping your freshly grilled meats into.  I found that my meats were well seasoned enough and I didn't need any.

Takashi has a several "tasting" meat platters so its hard to pick which one to go with - tongue tasting, stomach, etc.  I couldn't decide so I went with the Chef's selection mixed platter (Horumon-Moriawase) that had a little bit of everything: first stomach, liver, sweetbreads, large intestine, and second stomach.  The meat quality was decent, but nothing spectacular.  Each piece was distinctly different in taste and texture with sweetbreads being my obvious favorite.  Am I weird to think it was kinda fun to try two of the four cow stomachs.

Bakudan is the Korean take on rice balls.  They are balls of rice sprinkled with sesame seeds then lightly wrapped with seaweed.  The rice was not toasted or grilled, but soft.  Didn't particularly love this dish, but with a dinner full of meats it was nice to have some starches to change it up.

Portions here are very small so in a last attempt to fill my tummy, I had to order another meat dish.  The ribeye (rosu) was the largest piece of meat from the whole dinner.  The servers suggest a 2 minute grilling time, but I found that taking it off the grill a little earlier gave it the more medium rare touch that I like.

The meal ends with a cup of barley tea, which is traditionally Korean.  The tea is earthy and strong, but soothing.

It made me laugh a little when the check was presented with pieces of gum, which is common when eating out at Korean restaurants, but I was surprised to see an acclaimed expensive restaurant provide Wrigley's gum. 

 

Address:                    Takashi
                                   456 Hudson St.
                                   New York NY 
 

Type:                          Japanese/Korean

Popular chomps:        kalbi
                                    niku uni
                                    tongue
                                    shabu shabu
                                    yooke
                                    fois gras kobe beef burger

Chomp worthy:           fois gras kobe beef burger