Sakagura, Midtown East - She says...

We had every intention of eating leftovers last night, but somehow ended up at the bar at Sakagura. The restaurant, in the basement of an office building, feels like a well kept secret.


The menu is basically a continuous list of small plates, which is just how I like to eat. The first two dishes came out together: dried sardine crackers and tamago (sweet egg omelette) wrapped around grilled eel. The sardine cracker was a single, crispy layer of tiny dried sardines, served with a spicy mayo that was sweet and creamy enough to balance the saltiness of the sardine bits. But with five crackers per serving, the dish would have been more appropriate for a larger group. The tamago was sweet and moist, definitely better than the tamago from the average sushi place.


Next came the scallop dish, one of the specials of the night. The scallops were beautiful, barely seared and topped with a mango and egg yolk vinaigrette. The mango/egg yolk sauce was sweet and surprisingly strong. I loved the sweetness of the barely cooked scallops on their own, so I dipped into the vinaigrette sparingly. Still, the combination was flavorful and fresh.


With the scallops came our beef tongue stew with daikon, taro, shitakes, and spinach. This was probably my favorite dish of the night. The miso broth was delicious, and each piece of meat and vegetable had absorbed the perfect amount of liquid. The starchiness of the daikon and taro (a single piece of each placed deliberately at the bottom of the bowl) stood out nicely against the broth. And the chunks of beef tongue were amazing. I wonder if beef tongue would be a more popular protein if it had a more diner-friendly pseudonym, like the sweetbread. The tongue in this stew was tender and so flavorful, especially when I dipped it back into the broth.

The final dish of the dinner was a 2x2x2inch cube of slow cooked pork belly sitting in a pork broth. It is as insanely yummy as it sounds, and I'm sure he has written all about it. From my perspective, it's one of the best pork belly dishes I've had. There was a good proportion of meat to fat, and the fat had absorbed the rich flavor of the broth. It's Sakagura's signature dish, and definitely worth ordering each time. I'm pretty sure we both had big smiles on our faces as we finished our first bites (one order per person, of course).

The one dish to skip next time would be my dessert, I fell victim to not reading/understanding the menu well enough. The sake panna cotta was fine, but it came with two dried apricot sandwiches filled with sake lees. I assumed it would be a custard or cream, or at the very least sweet. I didn't expect a sour, stinky, curdled taste. Sake lees is essentially the pulp leftover after rice has been fermented and pressed to make sake. Not meant to be eaten as part of a dessert.

The overall meal was just what I had hoped for from Sakagura. Nice, slightly formal but very comfortable. The restaurant was full even on a Sunday night, but hopefully they always have at least two seats at the bar.