Takashi‘s been on my restaurant wish list ever since I read a glowing review in the New Yorker a while back. Raw offal? Check! Liver, heart, and sweetbreads? Yum! Grilled first, second, and fourth stomach? I’m there!
How could I possibly pass up a meat mecca with a menu offering “beef, all beef, and nothing but beef”?
This teeny yakiniku – or Japanese barbecue – seats only 34, but some of my favorite carnivores have flash-grilled their own beef here, including Anthony Bourdain, Melissa McEwen, and Chris Cosentino. In fact, Mr. Bourdain has declared that if he could eat just one dinner in NYC, it would be at Takashi.
I love the meat mural at Fette Sau, but the cutesy cartoons of Takashi’s beefy cuts and innards make ’em my favorite restaurant wall art of all time.
Plus, every cut is carefully sourced from small farms that sustainably raise their cows.
I wanted to sample so many items on the menu that my head started spinning like Linda Blair’s.
How can you not want to order some piping hot Testicargots? Seriously.
While we were studying the menu, we sampled the complimentary cabbage salad with miso dressing…
…and kimchee.
(I know soy, sugar, and white rice aren’t technically Paleo, but I ate ’em with gusto tonight. Avert your eyes if you don’t want to read about it.)
For our beef-centric feast, we started with Yooke (thinly sliced beef eye tartare with a raw quail egg)…
…Akiles-Yubiki (flash-boiled shredded achilles tendon with spicy sauce)…
…Gyutoro-Temaki Sushi (chuck flap hand-rolled sushi)…
…a plate of Testicargot (“cow balls escargot-style with garlic shiso butter”)…
…and stewed beef tendon casserole.
Then, our waitress pulled down the vent and fired up the grill so we could start charring our own meat at the table.
She also suggested the proper cooking times for each cut before letting us loose.
We quickly grilled short ribs…
…rib eye…
…belly…
…and “between-the-rib” meat.
Also, to sample the odd bits, we ordered the chef’s offal tasting platter…
…which included heart, liver…
…sweetbreads…
…and first and fourth stomach.
It wasn’t all meat, though. We did have some veggies in the form of a scallion salad.
And since I’d ingested so many vitamins and nutrients from the organ meats, I thought a cup of house-made vanilla soft serve was in order.
Totally worth it.
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