Yagura Japanese Market Review: Yagura rocks your shrimp socks off
If you follow midtown lunch then you know 41st street in midtown is like Japanese food heaven because there are three Japanese joints all lined up in a row. I really like the mom-pop feeling of Yagura, and also because it is the only one cool enough to have a mini-grocery store in the same space. I think you cannot go wrong anytime you walk into a restaurant and there is also a grocery store. How great would it be to have Piggly Wiggly attached to a McDonald’s. You are not familiar with Piggly Wiggly? Try Win a Date with Tad Hamilton. Yes, for some reason I have seen that.
I have tried many things from Yagura in the past since my old job was right by the place. It has great appeal here at Food In Mouth because you get to have Japanese food for reasonable prices. Sure, this is not like a trip to a fancy-pants restaurant but it is lunch and you are in a concrete jungle. This is about as good as it gets in the hood. By the way, I know all the cool kids like to use the word “nabe” but I am not one of those kids because when I first saw the word, it literally took ten minutes to realize what it meant. “Hood” is much easier to understand. Right?
Dish number one is beef yakiniku. Actually when I had no idea what yakiniku was when the order was placed, but it looked good in the picture menu they have up. Picture menus are also a big plus in my book. (Also, I might try to start saying phrases like “blah blah blah here at Food In Mouth. The last sentence might become ‘Picture menus are also a big plus here at Food In Mouth’ because after six months or so of blogging, the CDC still beats me up with key words like foot in mouth. boooooo Who wants to visit the CDC when they can visit ME?? Wow, long tangent.)
The beef yakiniku from Yagura is flavorful but the meat is not top quality of course. For six dollars though, you get some grilled beef with rice. There is also some vegetables and this lo mein thing. Apparently everything comes with the lo mein and veggies. It is a solid choice, but I have tried other things on the menu like the tonkatsu and the fried goodness probably beats the grilled goodness.
And the other dish I got last week was the shrimp tempura platter. Mmmmmm… First off, eight dollars is near the steep end for lunch. But for eight bucks basically you are doing one shrimp per dollar and you still get rice, lo mein, and veggies. Really though, you are just doing this for the shrimp tempura. Again, do not expect an ethereal tempura batter for a dollar per shrimp. Take this for what it is, which is the only way you can get eight fried shrimps for lunch with rice. I recommend this if you like fried things or if you like shrimp or if you like rice because they give you too much rich. (Although I do not care about too much rich, because I have rice in my veins. Those Gatorade commercials like to say, ‘Do you have it in you?’ The answer is yes. The answer is always yes, well sometimes.)
Oh and a service note, I have been slammed with a weird comment bot the last three days therefore this weekend I will reinstate that robot detetction for comments. Just a FYI ahead of time and I will try to find some solution where it prompts you to fill it in, in case you forget. The old system just ate your comment… I plan to lock myself in for a couple of days this weekend to focus on making some backend changes to the blog, so if there are some features you want to see, drop a line and I will try to make it happen. Thanks!
Yagura Japanese Market24 E 41st Street .New York, NY 10017212-679-3777
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