Sake Bar Hagi
Posted by bellastraniera - 23/06/09 at 04:06 pm
There’s a traditional red paper lantern at the door, stairs leading down off a random Midtown street, and the words “sake bar” inscribed on the wooden door jamb. Otherwise, there’s nothing that would alert you to this cult favorite izakaya place in Times Square. But look two doors left of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone and you’ll find Sake Bar Hagi, a draw for New Yorkers and Japanese tourists alike. The menu outside may not look particularly tempting, unless calves liver sashimi or broiled dried skate fin is your thing, but add your name and cell phone number to the list downstairs and in a half hour to an hour you will be inside, well on your way to figuring out the appeal of this place.
The interior has the same plain wooden tables, quirky Japanese beer and liquor posters, and flat screen TVs tuned to sports channels as a typical sake bar in Japan, though as D. pointed out, there the place would be filled with smoke. But there’s still plenty of drinking: on a Monday night we noticed three Japanese men with full steins of beer and a full pitcher besides – within an hour, they ordered another.
Look to the chalkboard of specials for some of the best food at cheap prices: one of our favorites was the gobo chips (burdock root) with cod roe mayonnaise ($6). The chips were addictively crispy and greasy, the dip like a cross between spicy mayo and taramasalata. Joey Deckle suggested making it spicier with the addition of shichimi.
Berkshire pork gyoza ($4.50) way exceeded the necessary quality for a sake bar – delicate, perfectly pan fried, airy, and perfumed with cabbage or bok choy. This sea eel tempura ($6.50), below, was light, crispy and intriguingly sweet, served with a side of citrus salt.
One non-traditional thing they do here is serve meats and fish with a slice of lemon. If it’s Japanese-American, so be it, because a spritz of citrus on these succulent duck yakitori was such a great combination that I wondered why all chefs aren’t combining these flavors.
Crispy chicken skin is an izakaya staple; though make sure you ask for it well done or it may be mushy.
Don’t miss the beef short ribs – they have just the right smoky barbecue flavor, they’re very juicy, if a bit fatty, and served with the sweetest, thinnest slices of white onion drenched in a savory sauce. (Joey Deckle has a story about these: One late night (Hagi is open til 3am) a guy walked in alone, sat at the bar, ordered nothing to drink, and said, “Give me the short ribs.” After the waitress left, Deckle said, “You work in a restaurant, don’t you?” The guy said, “I work at a place called Le Bernardin.”)
The bonito sashimi looks beautiful, but it’s skippable: I agreed with food blogger Yaokui, who concluded after trying Hagi’s that bonito was never meant to be eaten in sashimi form.
Supposedly the meat in a fish head is prized because it’s the most delicate and flavorful of all, but frankly I wrote this off to superstition until I tried the grilled yellowtail collar ($7) at Hagi. The dark meat in particular in this piece of fish is delicious.
If you think you can stuff one more thing down your gullet after a few of these dishes, spring for the mini corn dogs ($2 each), which, as the menu explains, are made with fish, not pork. The “hot dog” inside has the same consistency of an Austrian-style sausage, with a mild fish flavor, and as D. put it, anything deep fried in fresh corn batter has to be good.
Sake Bar Hagi
152 West 49th Street
Times Square
New York, NY
212-764-8549
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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.
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