Lucky Cat
A large maneki neko stands over the door at 232 East 53rd Street. Koji Kagawa runs the room behind it as an izakaya. Robata skewers, glazed eel and a pork and egg pancake all land in the middle of the table.1
Why go
Kagawa's framing is the Japanese one, and an izakaya is the gastropub people go to after work. He serves the food tapas style, mostly for sharing.1 So order across the robata and the sharing plates and keep going.
Time Out wrote the room up in February 2014. Taka Terashita was cooking tonkotsu then, with up to ten toppings. Hot pot, chicken skewers and grilled pork-belly buns sat beside thirty kinds of sake.2 I have found nothing published about it since.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Tokyo Set off the robata, $27 for pork belly, meatball, gizzard, scallion, shitake, thigh and skin.3
- Order: the glazed grilled eel and the octopus in wasabi sauce, the two plates the kitchen photographs first.1
- Order: the mentai cheese wontons, $11, crispy wontons filled with cream cheese and seasoned cod roe under wasabi mayo.3
- Avoid: ordering robata one skewer at a time. They start at $3 each and the Tokyo Set puts seven of them on one order.3
What locals & experts say
- Time Out New York, on 26 February 2014, when this was mostly a noodle room:
Paper lanterns light up the chef's counter where Taka Terashita (Maison O, Matsuri) cooks his tonkotsu pork broth, available with up to 10 toppings.
2 - Kagawa, on his own room: it is built
with the concept of Izakaya, a sort of informal gastropub for Japanese, commonly visited after work-drinking.
1
Good to know
- Which room: 232 East 53rd Street, the Midtown East izakaya.1
- For a party: the room takes private bookings and does catering.1
Verdict
could-visit — Book on Resy. Take the ramen only if you want to pay for it by the topping, from bean sprouts at $2 to cha-shu pork at $6.