This is an updated review for the Midtown / Times Square (Theater District) location for Ichiran. I had been to the original Bushwick location years ago, and I didn’t take pictures nor remembered much about it. The only thing I wrote down was it was a much better version of Shinsengumi. Shinsengumi was a popular Torrance (California) restaurant that served hakata style ramen. They also allowed you to select your flavor profiles, and it was far less busy than Ichiran.

Here is another nice neighborhood spot off Vernon Blvd in Long Island City. Reviews seem to rave about how good this neighborhood sushi spot is, so we decided to give it a try. The peach sparkling sake was relatively inexpensive and mighty tasty. The peach flavor tasted artificial, but it was still pretty good. It felt like drinking champagne without the heavy alcohol taste and with that artificial peach sweetener.

This place is basically chirashi haven. It’s miso soup. The uni don came with hamachi and spicy tuna and shiso leaf. I wasn’t too much of a fan of the spicy tuna compared to some other places, but it was still pretty good. The spicy tuna had a very particular flavor that was masked of course when you use soy sauce with wasabi. Otherwise, the fish tasted pretty fresh overall.

Close to NYU, this is next door to its parent restaurant Domodomo. This is primarily a rawbar, meaning somewhat affordable raw seafood. The iced green tea is nice for a warm day. The green tea is quite flavorful, but of course if you want it to be sweeter, you can ask for sugar. We ordered a dozen oysters. Essentially 2 of the following: Half Moon (Cape Cod Bay, MA) : sweet, medium salnity, clean finish Wellfleet (Wellfleet Harbor, MA) : briny, creamy, high salinity Savage Harbour (PEI, Canada) : crisp, sweet, medium salinity Chekbooktook (New Brunswick) : buttery, sweet, delicate Duxbury (Duxbury Bay, MA) : briny, sweet, and buttery finish the daily oysters : can’t remember what the waiter said about these other than being the saltiest of the east coast They serve oysters with your choice of 2 condiments: cocktail sauce, mignonette, wasabi lime sorbet, thai chili, and ponzu.

Katsu is some of my favorite Japanese food. We decided to try this restaurant because it was close to where we were in Midtown. This type of food generally is not overly expensive like other Japanese foods, and it’s pretty filling too. And for whatever reason, the pork cutlets are always really good and hearty too. The Berkshire pork cutlet is basically a slightly fattier piece compared to a regular pork cutlet.

The people behind My Name is Han opened a cool Yakitori place. On a Saturday, it was easy to get a table for 2. The zuke maguro is marinated tuna sashimi with fresh jalapeno sauce. The tuna was actually pretty good, and the jalapeno sauce has a nice kick to it. For the yakitoris: The skirt with shishito was pretty good. There wasn’t anything super special about it, but I really liked the flavor of the coal they use here.

This is a very clean sushi spot close to the Broadway subway station off the yellow N and W line. Instead of going all sushi, I decided to mix it up a little with standard Japanese snacks over straight up sushi cut rolls, sorta. The sea snails were cooked in a dashi broth, and were pretty tasty. I think my piece wasn’t cleaned entirely properly because there was some grit, but it tasted ok.

Hirohisa apparently has been around for a while, but they just received a Michelin star again this year. With that in mind, I felt the price point $160 pp for the 9-course tasting + $70 sake pairing was a decent price for splurging for a special someone’s birthday dinner. Just a note: they do respect some allergy restrictions. My guest had lobster specific allergies, and they were able to accomodate easy.

Food was bland, but the steak was surprisingly good for a touristy spot. There are a lot of scares from the ninja waiters. The sushi itself was also pretty bland and mediocre.

Decent Japanese snack place with okonomiyaki and octopus balls. But that’s about it.