Mom Hearts Jigmed

Usually when I go out to dinner with my family, my sister and I make a valiant effort to try and go somewhere delicious yet untrendy. My parents aren't exactly trendsetting (not that they're duds either), but, moreover, my dad expects a level of service that is often not found in an extremely busy and hip (yes, Ginger, I'm using the word again) establishment. Often in these type of restaurants, it's way less about food or service than it is about atmosphere and the scene. I guess this excalates on certain days of the week and especially on the weekends but we usually play it safe. My sister and dad's birthdays are pretty close together so we decided to do a joint celebration and my sister picked the restaurant. We opted for something asiany as that's my sister's fave, but once again a little troublesome with my mom who doesn't really eat japanese. After Tao was booked up, she looked into other options...and went with the downtown location of Megu. While the uptown version was close to our apt and probably an older crowd, we thought it best to go to the tribeca Megu even if it may be a bit more trendy. We all arrived at the restaurant and were seated promptly--however 10 minutes later, my dad was complaining about the sommelier and we began to get nervous.

Megu is beautiful though. We were seated in the downstairs dining room which sits below two stairwells that lead the path to a platform. In the center of the room is a buddah ice sculpture, and to the back the sushi bar and kitchen. We were seated directly next to the sculpture which my parents were enamored with and they wondered how it maintained its shape. But when my dad was disgruntled with the wine steward, my sister and I wondered if there was any way we would be able to turn his disappointment around. Luckily, Jigmed, our waiter arrived.

Jigmed was more than friendly, he was accomodating, helpful, and the apple of my Mom's eyes. When he first came over he explained to us how the menu worked: dishes are to share; choose a variety based on the pallete of each person at the table, and order a lot as the dishes are small. And the menu was definitely overwhelming...so as soon as he walked away we began to sort through the sections and my mom mentioned she thought he was cute. When he came back to the table, my dad asked Jigmed for Omikase for the table; he then asked us for the dishes that stood out to us, any allergies we might have and then he went to work preparing a customized dinner for us.

Jigmed started us with the crispy asparagus with 'okaki batter fry'- already he was on the way to my Mom's heart...she finds asparagus exciting and this asparagus had a nice little punch at the end. While the asapargus was still at the table, the yellowtail hamachi carpaccio with spicy kanzuri miso sauce was brought over, which was extremely fresh and delcious with a jalepeno on each slice. Following this came the red snapper salad with nuts and vegetables; which from the menu doesn't sound fantastic, but turned out to be one of the best dishes we had. This salad is prepared table side and basically looks like finely cut carrots and vegetables and some nuts. The server uses chopsticks to make little balls of the vegetables with dressing, and puts the snapper and nuts on top. Then he pours hot sesame oil over the snapper to sear it slightly and serves it. It was delicious to say the least, as was the bluefin tuna slices that came during the salad- super red and fresh. The dishes continued to come out ..and there were so many. Next was the sweet shrimp in kanzuir spicy cream which rivaled Nobu's spicy rock shrimp tempura, and then came some soft shell crab of some sort, which I can't fully eat because I actually might be allergic to it. When ordering Jigmed had asked if there was anything any of us really wanted on the menu, I answered the unagi, but the rest of my family was slightly creeped out by the thought of eel. Jigmed patiently tried to explain the taste and texture of 'uni' and somehow convinced everyone to try it including my mom, which would have been an unheard of thought before. I waited for the rest of my family to try the baked unagi with avocado and mentaikio sauce before i put mine in my mouth. I watched my mom's face, "This tastes like chilean sea bass," she said, which in mom-terms means "very good." I tried mine and while I liked it, I wan't blown away. After all these dishes, we didn't even know if we could handle any more and then the Kobe beef sliced grilled table side on a river stone came out; needless to stay it was awesome. The hot rock continued cooking the meat while on your table and was covered with pieces of garlic. The steak was tender, tasty and delicious-- a definite must have if you go to Megu. By the end of that, we were done. We had finished the white wine and the red wine (a 2005 Markeson Pinot Noir which was ridiculously fantastic and my dad shared with Jigmed who was extremely grateful), and then my dad ordered a dessert wine. The dessert wine was opened, my sister and mom had left for the bathroom, and to our surprise another entree came out--the grilled silver cod sikyo miso with green parsley sauce. We didn't know if we could even do another dish, but, of course, I pulled from deep within and gave it a try. Also really good: sweet and light. Jigmed apparently had sashimi ready to come out for us as well but we called that off and said we'd go with dessert instead.

While we discussed dessert with Jigmed, my father and him had a lengthy conversation about wine. I was watching my mom too, she was enthralled with what Jigmed was saying..."He's adorable," my mom procalimed. Jigmed even recommeded Landmarc down the block for well priced wines by the bottle and he gave his card. He then gave his dessert recommendations--we had a hard time choosing and opted for the fruit and chocolate fondue; the green tea crepes came as an extra and were by far the best.

The dinner that begun as "this could go horribly awry" actually beacame a "fantastic meal." This may be due partially to the delicious food, but I owe a lot of this to Jigmed; for giving my father the attention he insists upon and the wine talk to make him feel cool, and for providing my mom with eye candy and a 'nice personality'. And if you go to Megu and don't get him as a server, it's okay--the food stands for itself in excellence.

The Japanese Izakaya Experience

For the past couple of weeks, on my walk home from the subway, I’ve passed this place that looks sort of like a restaurant with a big orange “Riki” sign outside. The weird thing though is that there are no windows or visible door except down a small corridor. This door houses a little hanging “Open” sign. I’ve questioned what this was as it only seemed in operation after 6 and I only saw Japanese people go inside. Then one day, my sister tells me she really wants to try that new Japanese restaurant Riki. I told her I wasn’t sure it was actually a place to eat (I told her I thought it was a geisha house…apparently I really took the book Memoirs of a Geisha to heart) so we obviously consulted menu pages. On the site, they had another Riki listed at 45th between lex and 3rd so this has to be the original and the new one by my apt must had just opened up. The comments on menu pages all praised the establishment for being “Just like a Japanese Izakaya” and for those of us who don’t speak Japanese that apparently means some sort of traditional Japanese bar with drinks and snacks. This sounded extremely interesting and naturally made me want to try it.

Last night, my nut-allergic-friend and I decided to try the Izakaya as we were in the mood for sushi. Another piece of advice from the comments on menu pages was to try their hot food from the extensive menu. However, when we got to Riki, I felt completely overwhelmed and over stimulated. We walked in and a young woman greeted us and asked us if we would like to sit at the bar as the place had no tables left. Riki constantly had people walking in and almost every seat was taken mostly by Japanese people. There were also private rooms in the back for larger parties and another bar upstairs (which we didn’t get to see). At the sushi bar there were two TVs, each playing Japanese shows of random pop singers and children dancing. We were extremely entertained by this and the fact that one of the sushi chefs was wearing a black t-shirt that said, “Chef,” in case we didn’t know.

We sat at the bar and tried to look over the extremely large menu. The back of the menu had the standard sushi items which was a little more welcoming. I’m always down to try new things but I was still a littler nervous. Items that stuck out to me were cubes of beef in garlic broth and triangle rice balls of shrimp tempura. There were also a lot of cooked seafood, meats, and noodle dishes. Instead of doing these, however, I caved and ordered a dragon roll, a spicy tuna roll, and a miso ramen soup. This miso ramen soup was described as miso soup with Japanese noodles, but when it came out was really this extremely large bowl of soup with some sort of meat and noodles.

My nut-allergic-friend asked the waitress if there were sesame seeds on her rolls (a simple California and shrimp tempura roll). The server had no idea what she was talking about as she didn’t speak very good English. We had a trouble communicating for awhile until the sushi chef set a new roll on top of the counter and we could point out what sesame seeds were and reiterate that she was allergic. Unfortunately, we were unaware that the miso ramen soup must have had sesame oil or a type of nut in it because even regardless she had the throat-tightening feeling and was forced to take benadryl that she has so intelligently brought with her. She said she figured with them not speaking great English it would be inevitable.

The sushi was really good and the soup tasted sort of ‘traditional’ if that makes sense. I eyed other tables to see what they got. There was one table that had some sort of hot plate on it that was cooking a noodle dish while they ate it. It looked really good and I wondered what it was. The people next to us got some sort of spinach in sesame oil that also looked delic. I promised myself that I would come back and be more adventurous with the hot food. It’s places like this that you need a guide, a friend that knows the traditional cuisine to help you with your choices, any takers?