EN Japanese Brasserie

The sign, the low lighting, the friendly, soft-spoken Japanese waitstaff, and the menu - was I back at Cha Cha Hana in Tokyo? No, I was in New York, at EN Japanese Brasserie, thanks to a spot on recommendation from our friend Hana, but boy did it bring back wonderful memories of modern izakaya at its best in Tokyo.

We ordered their special homemade tofu (we chose to warm, rather than cold) with a special sauce (tasted like soy and dashi), cold chawanmushi topped with uni (seasonal dish), miso black cod, hot stone grilled organic chicken, shima aji and kanpachi sashimi, braised pork belly, and finished with their popular ice cream trio.

The tofu was quite possibly the best tofu either Mark or I had ever eaten. It was super soft and smooth, with a perfectly light tofu flavor complemented by a light, but flavorful sauce. There was a lot of it, we ate it all, and it went down so, so easy. A very auspicious start to the meal.

This untraditional chawanmushi was (again) perfectly light. Having just come in from the cold, I would have preferred a steaming hot chawanmushi, but completely understand why it had to be cold (nobody wants warm uni). The steamed egg and uni was a surprisingly complementary combo, and the uni was nice and fresh. Great dish if you like uni - even better if it's warm outside.

The miso black cod was a delicious standard, as was the kakuni (braised pork belly), particularly with some steamed rice, leaving us just enough space for a light dessert.

You get to choose three flavors for three scoops, out of six or so different options. Since the black sesame ice cream was mentioned numerous times on Yelp, and we both love black sesame, we went with two scoops of black sesame and one scoop of fig, which just sounded really good. The black sesame was good, but the fig was even better.

We washed all of this down with tea. I think it was oolong. It was very good, whatever it was.

Cha Cha Hana

Still on day 2 of the trip, I was already exhausted from a full morning that started really early. So I re-energized myself with some really great plum-flavored tea in the hotel room (and leftover shortbread cookies from our recent dinner at The French Laundry in Yountville - I know, how lucky am I?!?), we went in search of our first izakaya meal. I had requested a reservation at the trendy Cha Cha Hana, but was informed by the Park Hyatt concierge that they had no more reservations available that night, but we could walk in. It was recommended in multiple food blogs, so I was pretty excited about it, and the email seemed pretty hopeful, so I decided to give it a go.

It is located in a sub-district of the greater Shinjuku area of Tokyo called Kabukicho, which we quickly discovered was a sort of red light district as we wandered the neighborhood in search of the restaurant. We still did not have a full understanding of how addresses in Tokyo worked and how to read the Japanese atlas that my friend Jenny had kindly lent to us (don't worry, we figure it towards the end of the trip), so we had to wander a bit. Thanks to my online research, however, I knew to look for a quaint side-street and this symbol (I found out later that this is a handwritten version of the kanji for "hana"):

If I hadn't recognized the entrance and the symbol from a picture in the NY Times, we would never have found the place, since it looks like a dark house and has no other signage (no "Cha Cha Hana" in English or Japanese in front).

Our optimism paid off, as we were seated promptly upon arrival. It's like a Japanese home in that you take off your shoes at the entrance, and the main dining room has a raised tatami floor.

They sat us at the bar in front of the bartender, around the corner from which was the sushi chef. Both men were mighty impressive - the sushi chef for his clean, meticulous style (as you'd want from your sushi chef) and his unique sushi/sashimi plates (I swear he designed a new plate for every customer); the bartender for his skill with the ice pick, which he used to break up ice in his palm (we were waiting all night for the ice pick to slip and spill his blood all over the ice), and the proficiency with which he prepared drinks.

Per a food blogger's recommendation, we ordered some sashimi, our first in Tokyo. I wasn't expecting it to blow me away and we didn't order much, since we were really here for small plate specialties, but I was very impressed with its presentation, quality and freshness. We had some kanpachi and sake. Yummm!

Also impressive was the Shamo chicken, a special breed that is known the world over for being a cockfighting, "show quality" (is there such a thing?) chicken, but my friend Jenny had mentioned that her foodie friends in Japan know it to be particularly delicious, so I got very excited when I spotted it on the menu.

We tried a number of other dishes, including a Japanese yam dish (the circular dish below), and a couple of super-delicious desserts - a black sesame mochi with a dark sugar syrup sauce and a tofu "tiramisu" that contained red bean filling and a matcha sauce.

Everything was more delicious than we could have hoped, except for the clam yakisoba, which had mushy, sticky flat noodles that overpowered whatever clam flavor there may have been.

When we left, the street that seemed so charming before dinner was now a little creepy, with the rustling of homeless people settling in for the night, a constantly crying cat, and a falling-down drunk businessman unsuccessfully being propped up and guided by his date for the walk back to the subway (or maybe to a nearby "love hotel," who knows).