We were in NYC last weekend and really wanted to go to Nobu, but as expected, reservations were quite difficult to get on one day's notice. So we went to Nobu Next Door which is essentially the same food, just a little less formal atmosphere. I had heard alot of hype about Nobu's food and was curious as whether it could live up to expectations. I'm here to tell you; the food was phenomenal.

Highlight of the evening was the cod glazed in hoisin sauce. It was TO-DIE-FOR!

Second best dish was a raw tuna appetizer with a small jalepeno pepper for decoration and sinus clearing.

The vibe at NND was very hip, but not tragically so. One of my dinner parterns mentioned that while she was waiting for us to arrive, she spotted one of the five Queer Eye guys finishing up a plate. The great selection of house music set a good vibe for the restaurant. When not chatting amongst themselves, the patrons would take frequent bites of food, close their eyes, chew, let their heads bop to the music and then sit there stunned for a moment over how luscious each bite was.

Not bad for a Thursday night meal.

Indeed. Thanks for the write-up.

OFF TOPIC
We say Ray Liotta (sp?) when we went to the movies to see 'Lost in Translation' -- he and his date (girlfriend, friend, wife?) were headed in to see Kill Bill.

Last time we were in NYC before this we saw Stanley Tucci (sp?) and a friend catching a late breakfast at Barney Greengrass

Lafon - we almost went to Nobu ND last Sunday night. After a weekend of eating we decided sushi was the way to go.

The Nobu in Las Vegas was pretty darn good.

Lafon, did you try the infamous Tempura Rock Shrimp with Spicy Ponzu Sauce? One of the single greatest dishes I have ever had. We've relished in it at the NYC Nobu, NYC NND and the Miami Nobu branch.

Nobu rules.

Lots of people seem unimpressed with Nobu, but I have had nothing but excellent meals and fantastic service. Never bothered with wine there. Sopporo.

Black cod in miso is excellent.

jb

Coming back up to NYC in December. Will put this on the dining list.

Original NYC Nobu: I was impressed with the food. I was not impressed with the service. Food was excellent, very unique.

Kimber:

We did have the Rock Shrimp and it was "da bomb" as well, but a lesser bomb compared to the cod. Did I mention that the cod was TO-DIE-FOR? The service did get a little spotty after 9 p.m. when the place starting filling up. Then again, I think our server was more concerned over how he looked holding the cod dish as opposed to how we thought the cod tasted. I was not "down" with that.

Then again, put us in a room with hip music, beautiful people, great wine, and scrumptious food and he could have been holding the cod on his head for all I cared. As my friend put it, "Damn. What is wrong with this food? It's better than sex!" For the record, I'm "down" with the cod.

I should add that we had a very nice '99 Grunervetliner (don't remember the producer) with the tuna and a '00 Ch. Olivet CNP with the rest of dinner. The Grunervetliner was very dry and and crisp, not my type of wine, but the type of wine that Sancerre drinkers would appreciate. It provided a good pairing with the tuna.

The '00 Olivet went nicely with the other dishes and was decanted for about 30 mins. Lots of candied cherries with a medium body and nice finish.

All in all, it was a very surreal and memorable night.

DrT, when will you be there? We'll fly in the day after Xmas and fly out NY eve.

I've heard fairly divisive comments, but I guess we will have to see for ourselves. I'm always leery of trendy Asian places. I don't like China Moon, P.F. Chang or Shanghai 1890, but Slanted Door is great (but avoid the pho) and I liked Chinois (although it has been many years).

I'm with GATC - I'm a pho-phreak and I only like pho from those that does the Vietnamese noodles exclusively.

Unfortunately there isn't a Pho place where we live. Fortunately, there is a great one near work.

My wife and I spent $45 having sushi for lunch last weekend, but we would have been just as happy having pho (I get beef, she gets seafood) for $10 out the door.

GATC, we're lucky in that there's a big Vietnamese community in Northern Virginia, and Pho places are very common. Still, very few places have Pho that has that a great broth that is clear, savory and hearty without being heavy. I try to have Pho at least once a week - one of my favorite soul foods.

Sorry for the thread diversion...

We have only been to Nobu in Las Vegas--phenomenal! My favorite so far is the opaka-paka fish served on top of red forbidden rice, drizzled with melted white truffle butter. And you can't forget the ice-cold sushi, served in little bamboo cups.

Mrs. Doc, a great friend, and I were at NND in June 03. It was excellent. Wonderful service, great creations, and well worth the time and money. I would go back without any reservations.

I was looking forward to going to the one in NY, but some friends (from Italy) got me a little concerned. My wife and I took them to a very good sushi restaurant near work. The bill was easily under $100 for the 4 of us and it was a great meal. Our friends said that the Nobu in Milano has fancier decor and the food is about the same, but the same meal would cost $800.

Nobu in NY will set you back about $200 all-inclusive for two people if you don't order a crazy bottle of wine. Personally I always go with beer when there, but a Riesling might fit the bill as well.

jb

Thanks. I can live with that. Sounds like a fun place.

Through some effort, we got into Nobu earlier this week. I had called for about 5 weeks and could not get in. In fact, it was rare to get anything but a busy signal and when you did get through, it was normally a canned message to go to Nobu Next Door. We went to Nobu Next Door and they said that it would be 1:15 to 1:30 wait. My wife went to Nobu and got on their waiting list. We gave them my cell phone number at both places and walked around the area since neither place has a waiting area. There is very little open at night in that area. The restaurant/bar at the end of the block had no place to sit at the bar, so we walked around 10 blocks then we went back to see how we progressed on the waiting list. Nobu Next Door said that we only killed 25 minutes and that it would be at least another hour. Nobu said that it may be anohter 45 minutes. We finally found a little art gallery 1/2 block away from Nobu that was opened. We stayed there for around 30 minutes when my cell phone rang and Nobu said that they could take us if we were willing to take a small table. We jumped on it. The "small table" actually could sit 4 and was twice the size of the table we had at Babbo the night before, so I'm not sure where the "small" came from. We had waited a total of 55 minutes. 5 minutes later as we were looking at the menu, Nobu Next Door called and said that they have a table for us. I thanked them and said that we just got a table at Nobu, next door.

My wife an I had the $80 Tasting Menu and my daughter ordered Chicken Teriyaki. We tasked what the difference was between the $80, $100 and $120 Tasting Menu and the waiter said that the more expensive ones were virtually the same, but you get toro (the fatty stomach of the tuna) vs maguro (regular tuna) for the $100 one and another substitution for the $120 menu. Since my wife and I don't like toro anyway, the choice was easy.

The $80 tasting menu had the following:
Hamachi (yellowtail tuna) with cavier floating in a pool of wasabi
Sashimi salad with arugula and other greens in miso dressing
Whitefish sashimi New Age Style
Tempura Rock Shrimp with Spicy Ponzu Sauce
Cod glazed in sauce
Miso Soup with Clams
Sushi
Oatmeal rounds with chestnut filling floating in a chocolate sauce

The waiter told my daughter that this is the best Chicken Teriyaki that she will ever have. This was a mistake since she is loves chicken teriyaki and always orders it at a Japanese Restaurant. She has also grown up on my teriyaki sauce, which I have been making since I was a kid. By her estimation, the Nobu version was average at best and 3X the cost of better versions.

As for the Tasting Menu, we were told that this was a good way to taste the very best dishes that they had to offer. The Hamachi appetizer was interesting. Hamachi is my favorite fish and I would order it whenever I can. In the Nobu version, the chopped hamachi was good but the wasabi sauce was so strong that if you got more sauce than you wanted (a problem since the mound crumples into the sauce) it was not salvageable. I can take wasabi as well as anyone, but this was way too strong and spoiled a potentially exciting dish. The cavier served no purpose other than to add saltiness to the dish.

The sashimi salad also suffered from an overbearing miso-soy sauce dressing that was way too strong. The 3 pieces of maguro were very stringy and cuts like this would not normally be served in this manner. A good sushi chef would take out the suji (sinew) and make tekka maki or shopped spicy tuna with the meat. This could have been a good dish if it were not for the poor quality of the tuna and the overbearing dressing.

I can't remember the whitefish used for the 4 thin slices, but it is normally not a fish I would chose for sashimi. It didn't matter because the New Age Sashimi depended more on the sauces used than the fish itself. Olive oil and some other sauce dominated the fish. It was interesting and the cuts of fish were of good quality.

The Tempura Rock Shrimp was good - it came nice and hot (temperture wise) when served so it was very light. It was fairly spicy and went well with the beer.

I'm not sure that the cod we had was the same as the one Lafon mentioned since it seemed more like Cod marinated in teriyaki sauce than hoisin sauce. The waiter said that it was marinated for 2 days and the sauce had good penetration. This was a nice dish, but a little sweet for me. If I were to try and recreate this dish, I would start with a teriyaki sauce base and add some miso and ginger.

The miso soup was pretty light, so I would guess that it was white miso. It has 2 clams in the shell which were plump and added a nice touch to a basic Japanese staple.

The sashimi consisted of 4 pieces - tuna, salmon, hamachi and saba. The people in the art gallery down the street warned us against ordering sushi. I can see why since the quality of the fish is average and the prices are astronomical.

The dessert was a mystery. The waiter said that it was some oatmeal concoction. It consisted of 3 oatmeal rounds with had no (or little) sugar so they could not be eaten by itself. But they were so stiff that you could not break it with a spoon. And since it is sitting in a pool of thin chocolate sauce, you could not pick this up. It seemed like there was a filling of chestnut paste between the 3 oatmeal rounds. Impossible to eat and not much flavor anyway

I had a tall Kirin beer and my wife had a special cocktail.

We had a good time and found the various dishes to be interesting and fun. But as I wrote this, I started to think what my parents would think about this place. They always say to look at the people who are eating at the restaurant. See if the locals eat there or if it is an ethnic restaurant, see if people of the race eat there. Since we sat near the entrance, I saw a lot of people come and go and I was the only Japanese there and I didn't see anyone that looked like a Peruvian.

GATC,

Good writeup.

Interesting; all the sushi you can eat for $80. What a concept.

GATC, hamachi is also my favorite sushi. I have found, when restaurants have tekka-don on the menu, that they will make hamachi-don if you ask. Given that hamachi is the favorite of both of us, I'm surprised you don;t like toro. It's my number two, followed by uni with a raw quail's egg yolk. I better stop, or I'll be drooling on my keyboard.