YAKITORI TAISHO

She says:
When I think of eating in New York City, I picture cramped hole-in-the-walls with a heavily-accented staff serving up authentic fare. Yakitori Taisho epitomizes this ideal, and for that reason I loved dining there. We stepped off the bustling sidewalks of St. Mark’s Place and ducked through a low doorway into the cozy Japanese grill house. The first thing we noticed is that it was packed with Asians… it’s always a good sign to see Asians in an Asian restaurant! As we waited, I marveled over the cook who worked furiously behind the grill… with his pointy goatee, wispy black mustache, bright red cap, and outdated, enormous glasses, he was absolutely fabulous.

Yakitori is a type of skewered meat (typically chicken) that is grilled over charcoal. Unlike sushi, it is an everyday Japanese food, something grabbed from an outdoor stall to accompany a post-work beer. We tried two types of chicken yakitori. The plain chicken was delicious in its grilled perfection, but the chicken with plum sauce was inedible until we scraped off the sauce. It was WAY too tart and salty, and nothing like the sweet hoisin taste that I was expecting.

He says:
It was a cold and windy evening that night in NYC, so I ordered a bowl of ramen with pork to warm me up. I’m glad I did because it was the best thing I had at Yakitori. The pork strips were very tender and the broth had a far richer consistency than those I’ve found at other noodle shops.

Uptown Girl and I also sampled the soft-shelled crab, which had been deep-fried in its entirety! Beside the awesome novelty of biting through the crispy shell of a crustacean – a first for me – I thought it was very good. I like my seafood to taste like the sea, and you can’t beat this dish’s intense brininess.

She says:
I really didn’t like the soft-shelled crab. Because we were eating the entire crab, we were exposed to the full flavor of the little critters, which was overwhelmingly fishy in the way that only a bottom-feeder can achieve.

Fortunately, my pan fried glass noodles were simple and satisfying, and reminded me of the delicious Chinese noodles my college roommate used to cook up late at night.

We say:
Stick with the yakitori and noodle bowls and you can’t go wrong.




Yakitori Taisho
5 St. Marks Place, New York, NY 10003
http://www.yakitoritaisho.com