Sakagura, Midtown East - He says...

Last night, we went to Sakagura.  It was originally recommended to us by my mom.  She has a good eye for Japanese restaurants in the midtown east area so I was looking forward it.  On top of this, we realized when we were waiting for a table that Sakagura is under the TIC restaurant group, the company that also owns Curry-Ya (curry), Rai-Rai-Ken (ramen), and Otafuku (okonomiyaki) – some of our favorite Japanese restaurants.  So we had some pretty high expectations before we even sat down.  Luckily, we weren’t let down.

As usual, we ordered a good deal.  But the plates were moderately portioned so it wasn’t too much food.  Not to mention they were all really good.  One of my favorite dishes of the night was the seared scallop with an egg and mango sauce.  The scallop was lightly seared and nicely rare in the middle.  The sauce, which had a pretty yellow color, was sweet with a rich flavor thanks to the egg.

But the best thing on the menu was definitely Sakagura’s specialty – the ‘buta kakuni’, a braised pork belly.  We ordered one each.  Each portion was served in its own small bowl sitting in what was probably the braising liquid.  Looking at it, it kind of reminded me of an iceberg.  All I really saw was a small piece of fat sticking out from the sauce.  But when I stuck my chopsticks in to pull it out, I realized it was actually a big 2 cubic inch chunk of pork!

The pork was perfectly cooked with bacon-like proportions of meat and fat.  The meat was extremely tender.  I also kind of had to slurp as I bit it because of the natural juices and the sauce it absorbed.  The sauce itself was also very delicate with nothing very overpowering.  It's probably one of the best things from a pig I’ve ever had, which is saying a lot from someone who loves some fatty pig.  For pork belly, it's definitely up there with the pork from the Momofuku buns.  As good as this and the other dishes were, none of them were really that complicated.  But that’s what I love about Japanese food – it’s so simply delicious.

Unfortunately, the dessert was a low-light.  Mine was decent enough.  It was essentially a red bean bun with homemade green tea ice cream – nothing to get excited about.  She had a sake panna cotta, which was essentially just a milk gelatin.  The worst part of the dish was some apricot and cream sandwich on the side.  We laughed because the filling kind of tasted like those baby-bell cheese singles.  I usually feel bad when the dessert is bad because she really loves dessert.

But it’s not something that would keep us away; I think the main parts of dinner are fantastic enough to keep us coming back often.

I also wanted to make one final note on the bathroom.  It's uncommon to see in the US, so it's nice to see the level of cleanliness available here.  I think the image speaks for itself.