Izakaya Toribar

Summary

When people say Manhattan has practically endless restaurants, it’s quite true. There’s not enough time, money, and health to try all the different restaurants out there. For this visit into the city, we decided to go after yakitori since that was fairly close around the area we were at. We have had previously been to Torishin, a former Michelin 1-star, so I wanted to show my partner different yakitori places that were less upscaled. This one looked like a good candidate. This restaurant, if it weren’t for the outdoors setup, would’ve been a little difficult to spot because it’s in the basement of a building.

This frozen midori sour was pretty good and nothing overly special about it. It definitely is similar to a frozen margarita essentially except the alcohol is vodka.

The agedashi tofu came with deep fried tofu coated with potato starch and topped with bonito flakes, scallion, grated radish, and light soy sauce. This was quite delicious to me. The starch did a good job absorbing the flavors of the sauce.

The takoyaki (3 pcs) was wheat flour-based batter filled with minced octopus and topped with green laver, bonito flakes, takoyaki sauce, Japanese mayo and served with pickled ginger. This was a solid pick and was pretty delicious. It had a good portion of octopus to batter quantity.

The chicken and pork gyoza (5 pcs) was pan-fried Japanese dumplings filled with a savory mixture of ground chicken and pork and veggies. Even though these were small, this was fried perfectly on the bottom and was seasoned pretty well.

Now onto the yakitori.

The king oyster mushroom (pictured on the bottom) came lightly salted. I dislike mushrooms in general, but my partner liked this.

The shishito peppers (pictured on the top) came lightly salted. The shishito was nothing particularly different than other places, but it really absorbed the salt and smoke from the coals. It was delicious, and neither of us had a spicy hot one.

The ebi (shrimp) came lightly salted. The whole thing is edible including the head. Typically the head with all the guts would have a very strong ocean water after taste. This one not so much. The natural flavors were great.

The chicken breast came lightly salted. The breast came with 3 pieces and was very tender.

The smelt (top) came lightly salted and tasted how you’d expect. For those that don’t know, the entire smelt is edible, and there are a lot of eggs inside.

The asparagus wrapped in pork belly (middle) came lightly salted. The bacon was delectable around the asparagus. My partner never had this before, but I almost always look for this when visiting a yakitori restaurant.

The chicken thigh (bottom) came lightly salted and with many pieces. As expected, the natural flavor of the thigh combined with the smoke from the coals made this very tasty.

The okonomiyaki came with pork belly and was a Japanese pancake filled with grated yam, cabbage, corn, and topped with green laver, bonito flakes, okonimiyaki sauce, and Japanese mayo. This was just like how I remembered from good places back in Los Angeles. The pancake is pretty filling but also fluffy and very delicious. I think the ratio of their batter to fillings is one of the best I’ve had in Manhattan.

We sat indoors in the current COVID temperament. The waitress checked our temperature, and the tables were social distanced apart. There weren’t too many people since we walked in the late afternoon. The interior reminded me a lot of Los Angeles yakitori places. It has that modern hip feel, I guess a little similar to sake bars.

The service was excellent as it was easy to flag staff as needed.

Final Verdict

Surprisingly, this is a pretty legit yakitori place in Midtown if you’re craving for it. We think the price is decent, and it’s easy to get full if you order the right things. Compared to my favorite Los Angeles place (Furaibo), it doesn’t quite replace it, but I think by New York City standards, it’s a really great choice.

Yelp Jabs

Very unorganized, a guy just cut in front of us without reservation. And the restaurant did nothing about it. Not even an apology. Space is not protected for any COVID measurement. And is complying with NYC regulation of limited seating.

This Yelper sounded a little bitter. The space protection was fine, and the seating was in fact limited even in the Yelper’s pictures. They just didn’t do the math correct. It’s 50% based on total occupancy and not what you think is comfortable.

The food here were just so so. Some of the skewers we had were over-cooked. And they served a lot of skewers simultaneously, thus unavoidably some of them got cold and not longer tasty despite we try to finish quickly.

When we ate, they asked if that was ok. You bet it was. I suspect it wasn’t so much that their timing was off, but maybe this Yelper forgot to eat. My partner who eats very slow had no issues with having multiple skewers delivered.