It's been a while since I have been overwhelmingly in love with a place but Sakagura has me totally enamored with it. Normally I find Midtown East to be super gross - a place that has nothing of note besides being a office building hub. But there are surprisingly a lot of Japanese restaurants nearby and I had stumbled upon this place when glancing through Yelp on the day I had to drop off my passport at the Brazilian consulate on 41st street. My appointment was right around lunch time, so I figured it would be fun to grab lunch in a part of town that I normally don't hang out in.
I would have never found this place if it wasn't for the internet. It's literally in the basement of an unmarked office building and you have to go down the stairs and through a scary concrete hallway before entering this oasis. I felt like I was on Law and Order: SVU and could have been attacked at any moment. It's truly a speakeasy in every sense for the word. I got there exactly when they opened at 11:30 - despite it's ultra secret location, I had read that this place can get very crowded during lunch time. Everything on the menu sounded drool worthy. It's not a sushi place, more like a classic izakaya but they do have several sashimi and raw fish options. If I had the money and time, I would have sat there for hours gorging on the different soba noodle options (hot and cold), donburi bowls (the set comes with an order of soba noodles) and other assorted goodies. But I had read about the famous sea urchin soba ($20). They only have 7 servings of it per day and being that I was the 1st person in the restaurant I felt obligated to order it - plus I love sea urchin! I also got the sashimi appetizer (3 kinds for $18) to start my meal.
I have to give a major shout out to the decor of this place. You'll feel like you were transplanted to Japan - it's got this magical and very authentic feel to it. It's beautifully decorated with lots of wood paneling and large sake kegs. I could sit there all day staring at the surroundings. The sashimi came out first and it was a trio of salmon, tuna and fluke. It was melt in your mouth delicious. If I felt comfortable spending tons of money on lunch, I would have gotten the 5 kind for $28. But every piece was fantastic and perfectly cut. Next the sea urchin soba came out and it was gorgeous. It's a bowl of handmade cold soba noodles topped with 3-4 pieces of fresh sea urchin sashimi, soaking in a cold sea urchin soup. Yum! I felt bad because I slurped up the whole thing less than 10 minutes. I didn't really give myself a lot of time to really savory each bite. Of course I would have loved more sea urchin and I will say that I've had creamier and tastier sea urchin before but the fact that it was sitting in a sea urchin soup base really sealed the deal for me. As I was finishing up my meal, I did notice a lot of people coming in for lunch and most of them were Japanese (always a good sign). This would be a fantastic place for a date or even with a group so that you can split of bunch of stuff. I should note that they have a fantastic sake line up, so I could see this place being really fun at night after a bunch of bottles of sake. I'm completely obsessed with this place and would even make that special trip to Midtown East just to eat here. I was really sad to leave after only having 2 dishes but it wasn't a very cheap lunch and I did have to get back to work. Total bill: $48 with tax and tip
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