If you're looking for real Japanese food, go to these places:
Mitsuwa Marketplace
595 River Road
Edgewater, NJ
Otafuku
East 9th Street btw. 2nd and 3rd Avenue
New York, NY
Kenka
25 (?) St. Mark's Place (The heart of the Village)
New York, NY
Mitsuwa is a huge-ass Japanese supermarket with a good-sized food court. Fresh sushi and sashimi that they also sell the raw ingredients for, real homemade ramen, bubble tea, etc.
Otafuku is the best place for takoyaki, okonomiyaki, and yakisoba in the metro area. Period. That's all they do: just those three dishes in a tiny little hole-in-the-wall storefront. But it's cheap and oh so delicious. That whole block has a couple of other Japanese places, including an overpriced food market (Take the bus to Mitsuwa; it's cheaper and better quality there, with a crapload more selection), an upscale soba restaurant, and other Japanese places.
Kenka is an izakaya (Japanese bar) with awesome food. They have a menu of a hundred or so little dishes, none of which costs more than seven bucks, and nabe (stews) that are meant for multiple people. Da Capo, anyone? Of course, all the food is incredible. They have dishes like turkey testicles and grilled bull penis, but the less-scary-sounding stuff like grilled corn with sweet sauce, asparagus with bacon, and broiled mushrooms are fantastic. The beer is cheap and plentiful, and true to the Village, they don't card. The sound system is a couple of old bullhorns playing old wartime propaganda music and Godzilla soundtracks. It is AWESOME.
Funky, they have Mitsuwa on the east coast too? There's one south of here in Sunnyvale, CA (S.F. Bay area.) Good place to shop.
Does yours make fresh sata andagi?
There's one in Chicago, too. Well--it's in Arlington Heights. They don't make sata andagi, though.
Best thing: Go to the ramen place in the food court, and ask for the kimchi ramen. It's not the menu, but..
Nope, they don't. Closest thing was when they had an Okinawa/Kyushu/Ryukyu food fair and they had the flour for 'em. ;-;
Otafuku is pretty good, but no way is it "cheap."
A very small meal easily runs up to 8 or 9 dollars.
Do other NY 4-cher's want to meet and get some food together?
Info about Mitsuwa: they are closing mid-next week, from Monday to Friday, I believe, and re-opening on the weekend. They will have three new food places. The names elude me at the moment, but from what I can tell, there is an udon shop, a katsu/curry shop, and one other shop of indeterminate origin. It was on the flyer; when I get home later, I'll check it. Too bad I don't have a scanner. ;-;
>>6
My girlfriend and I are skipping Onnafest in Newark to go to the grand re-opening. I'm game for a gathering. Word of advice, though, it's going to be crowded as Comiket for the occasion.
>>5
That's cheap for New York, and those "very small meals" are usually pretty filling, no?
Update: Mitsuwa in Edgewater has just gone through a MAJOR renovation. A lot of the stuff has relocated and there are new additions:
1) A new ramen shop with some new dishes, others that look quite good and are unique to the shop, about twelve or so ramens
2) An udon shop - nothing but udon of all sorts and types, with maybe fifteen or so different types of udon
3) A katsu shop - croquettes, katsu, tempura, all in meal sets. You get a choice of a couple of little sides and such, including fresh tofu, salad, etc.
The travel agency has moved, shrunk, and been renamed.
The fancy pastry shop that sold tins of gaufres and other fancy Japanese and Japanese Western-style sweets (The kind you give as gifts to show that you spent $40 on two cookies) has been expanded and moved.
The sushi, bento, and onigiri things they used to sell near the front have been moved to the rear of the market area and are now paid for at the market registers, not the seperate kiosk.
I don't know what happened to the fried stuff they had - takoyaki, take-out croquettes, etc. Same goes for the big bubble tea shop... it doesn't seem to have a presence anymore, which is sad, because the nearest ones are now either in Chinatown or Parsippany. ;-;
Also, a lot of the shops in the accompanying strip mall seem to have moved out or lost their leases. It looks like the gift shop that often had random anime and Japanese stuff is gone, as is the clothes store where you could get a real kimono or an insanely overpriced suit if you wanted. The bookstore is still there, though.
The new layout is very nice, definitely made for foot traffic and heavily playing up the food court. There's more seating space, too, and if anyone's there on a Saturday afternoon in the winter, you'll see that it's necessary.
Oh, almost forgot to mention: now that it's getting colder again, they have roasted sweet potatos out front, too, just by the front entrance. Something like 3 lbs/$5, which is a potato or three. I haven't had any yet because I'm always stuffed from eating inside.
Anyone up for a world4ch/iichan gathering?
kenka is both tasty and cheap; plus you get COTTON CANDY
Amen. Gotta love the sound system there, too. Listening to the music makes me wanna go start up my own co-prosperity sphere.
Have you ever had the shimeji mushrooms cooked in butter? Those are freakin' delicious. I never get enough people to make it worth going, though; the best way is about ten things for eight or nine people and four pitchers of Kirin through the night, just to start.
(Kenka is 26 St. Mark's for those not in the know. It's not at all far from the subway stop near Cooper Union. That whole area has a bunch of izakaya and Japanese places, but Kenka is the best. Look for the huge-ass light-up tanuki statue)
>>8
Do they still sell taiyaki and curry??
They most certainly do. You can still get a curry rice or curry udon at the ramen shop, and Oishinbo is still making fresh taiyaki, obanyaki, creamyaki (most descriptive name ever) and all that good stuff. I think you can also get katsu curry at the tonkatsu place as well, which is where I intend to have my next Mitsuwa lunch. Maybe this weekend I'll fast and then go eat there, and report back again.
Update: since they remodeled the place, the udon shop has TWO curry udons: beef or chicken.
I had the kimchi/pork udon and it was BLOODY FSCKING DELICIOUS, only it seemed a little small compared to my girlfriend's tempura udon. Big plus, though: they had a bowl of fried tempura flakes that you could sprinkle into your udon. ^_^