You may get a sinking feeling as you approach Mr. Robata, the new Japanese restaurant on Broadway, in the north end of the theater district—you'll find it located next to a souvenir shop and directly next door Flash Dancers, "A Gentleman's Club." Not a promising location (depending on what you're into) but behind its doors awaits a little oasis of sophisticated Japanese cooking. To start, you may consider the Foie Gras Cappuccino?
The sprawling menu at Mr. Robata—the name riffs on the Styx song and the popular Japanese style of grilling where ingredients are skewered and rested across bricks so that they never actually touch the coals—starts with a choice of Miso soup or the Foie Gras Cappuccino, which visually resembles a cappuccino but is really more like a soup. It's a mix of miso, sauteed foie gras, sansyo pepper, and orange zest. Why not?
Spicy tuna escargot
Chef Masaki Nakayama is an ambitious chef; his style is part Japanese, part French-inspired; he trained with acclaimed chef Paul Liebrandt (Corton), and he has a thing for edible flowers. Nakayama recently invited us in for a visit, and we left dazzled, in part because nearly every dish he sent out, be it sushi or Japanese fusion "tapas," came dressed with a seemingly endless array of exotic, edible flowers. These include (get out your notebooks):
- Kombu: edible kelp from the Laminariaceae family, widely eaten in east asia. Extensively cultivated on ropes in the seas of Japan and Korea. (Used in ponzu sauce)
- Shiso: the Japanese name for perilla, often cut in strips and used in salads. Its flowers are used in japanese cooking, often pickled. (Used in shiso pesto and “never too late” roll)
- Konjac: also called coodoo lily, it is a plant of the genus amorphophallus, native to warm subtropical and tropical parts of eastern asia, from japan and china south to indonesia. It’s a perennial plant, with leaves up to 1.3m in diameter. Leaves and flowers are used in japanese cooking. (Used in vegetarian sashimi salad.)
- Myoga: an herbaceous, deciduous perennial native to japan and southern korea that is grown for its edible flower buds and flavorful shoots. Flower buds are shredded and used as a garnish for miso soup and roasted eggplant. (Used in sashimi martini.)
- Nasturtium flowers: one of the most popular edible flowers. They come in quite a few colors, which means he’s using many different species of nasturtium. Used in green salad, tuna tataki salad, kaisou seaweed salad (which also uses 5 kinds of seaweed), salmon artichoke salad.
The food here is as beautiful as it is intricate, and the atmosphere is one of calm, orderly, Japanese civility. In other words, it's the opposite of what you just braved to get there. Ideally located for a leisurely pre-theater meal, Mr. Robata has boasts an extensive sake list, which is organized on the menu with a map detailing what part of Japan each bottle comes from. Nakayama's fiancee, Sara Ikegami, serves as the restaurant's erudite sake consultant, and her knowledgeable stories of each sake's origins is fascinating. But by the third bottle, you probably won't remember a word of it.
