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.
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.