Rawbar by Domodomo

Summary

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. Pictured is the cocktail sauce and mignonette. East coast oysters tend to be more briny and salty than west coast, but the best part of this is that it’s simply not as expensive as other places. The average Manhattan east coast oyster price is $3 per.

The negi toro is a fatty tuna with scallion hand roll. This was pretty good though you can tell it’s not entirely filled to the brim on both ends. The seaweed for the hand rolls are remarkably crispy, so make sure to eat it right away once they serve it.

The blue crab has garlic aioli and sauteed onion. This was alright, and I definitely recommmend to skip this if you have had blue crab before. The blue crab sweetness was non-existent, and like the tuna wasn’t filled end to end.

The spicy salmon came with spicy mayo. Between the toro and the salmon, I pretty much prefer the toro. I’ve always liked tuna over salmon.

The shrimp dumplings came with wagyu chili oil, yuzu ponzu, and cilantro. I was expecting the ponzu to be more potent and sharp, but it was rather on the subtle side. The dumplings individually were decent, but nothing superb about them if you have had dumplings elsewhere. The skin is similar to typical Chinese boiled dumplings.

The garlic bacon fried rice was served with masago, green onion, sesame seed, and onsen egg. I totally forgot to take the picture before it got mashed together with the egg. Just imagine the plate with the rice on bottom, masago on top, and the onsen egg on top of that. You can typically order onsen egg with Japanese ramen. It’s very similar to a poached egg but sometimes has a little sweetness added to it. So imagine this bowl of rice mixed with little smelt roe, salty bacon, and warm egg yolk in a piping hot pot where the rice can harden into little rice crackers. It was pretty good.

The atmosphere here is very fast casual with a modern Japanese clean feel to it. Service is very attentive.

My only grip was I feel they are a little timid with portions in the hand rolls. In all 3 pairs of hand rolls we ordered, they were filled about 70%, so at first glance it seems a waste of a handroll. They were quite tasty though, but I would recommend those seeking for a full hand roll experience to go to Kazunori instead in the Flatiron District. Price wise, the hand rolls were not as cheap/filling as Los Angeles, but definitely tolerable for what they have to offer.

Final Verdict

This is a pretty good fast casual hand roll spot with lower than average oyster prices near NYU.

Yelp Jabs

Big decrease in both quality and quantity, yet not enough discount on price. Kind of a dick move imo.

This elitist is complaining the restaurant is giving less but charging similar, yet they still ordered it. Common sense might have said to the elitist to not order it because there’s less discount on the price. You can’t really fault the restaurant for the poor choices a consumer makes.

I highly recommend getting the uni and wagyu handroll though! It literally melts in your mouth.

If you are price reserved, I don’t recommend getting this because of the upcharge you are paying for this. It literally is just uni and a slice of tender meat. Just imagine how that tastes like together.