#izakaya

#izakaya

Philadelphia restaurateur Michael Schulson opens Double Knot tomorrow, Wednesday, February 18, at 1251 Avenue of the Americas at West 50th Street; it's the first New York location of the Philadelphia restaurant that originally opened in 2016. The sprawling new space brings a 12,000-square-foot, bi-level izakaya to a Midtown corner across from Rockefeller Center that's been trying to reinvent itself for at least five years.

Pour Manners will pop-up at The Punchdown wine bar & bottle shop in Oakland on Friday, November 21st from 4-9pm. Pour Manners is a project of Boi Soth, serving izakaya inspired by the multicultural cuisines of the Bay Area. You can see our latest menu here. A glimpse at Friday's menu: 2-piece kushiyaki skewers: Chicken thigh with frizzled leeks, tare, yuzu kosho and sea salt Cambodian kroeung marinated steak with lemongrass tare, and kaffir lime sea salt Pork belly marinated in a calamansi ponzu topped with garlic chicharon and serrano pepper.

At the top end, sushi masters are practising a truly creative art, turning out delicate dishes that are almost too pretty to eat.

Try the crispy chicken thigh karaage, fried in a feather-light batter and doused with a tangy chile-honey sauce. The sweet-and-spicy interplay feels like some of the fried chicken glazes you might find in Koreatown. At brunch, try the tamagoyaki-style omelet, an oval spiral of luminous golden eggs sliced and crowned with shaved Comté, chives, and cracked black pepper.

The people behind and the now-closed Hina Yakitori are teaming up to open a currently unnamed restaurant, which will be an izakaya in the Financial District.

I've had the pleasure of visiting Japan twice in the recent past, and it's quickly become one of my favorite places in the world. Everyone is organized and polite, there are bidets everywhere, the food is outstanding and, maybe best of all, Japanese people love to drink. From Tokyo's neon-lit karaoke rooms and elegant cocktail bars to the buzzing izakayas of Osaka, the drinking culture of Japan is woven into daily life, seasonal festivals and centuries-old traditions.

Most aspiring chefs break into the biz washing dishes in bustling restaurant kitchens, but for Vinh Nguyen, that education began at home. "My family and I made friends with everybody, mostly because of my mom's cooking," Vinh said during a recent phone interview. "My mom would make food and bring it over unabashedly to neighbors' houses, so being the youngest one, I always followed her in the kitchen like I was her baby sous chef."

Down a narrow flight of stairs off a nondescript stretch of East 50th Street, past a ceramics studio and behind a clothing boutique, is the 14-seat restaurant Hori. Technically, anyone is welcome inside the izakaya, divided into an eight-seat bar and a six-seat room, although reservations are required and even the most vigilant stalkers of the Resy page will find that there are not actually reservations available for the restaurant, ever.

Doto replaces Jewel in Virgil Village, featuring chef Jared Dowling's California izakaya dishes, aiming to become a neighborhood staple with seasonal offerings.