Izakaya opened in October in the East Village, with a narrow dining room that is calm and white but not austere, thanks to mismatched chairs and a snaking shelf of sake bottles.”
“We take really good care of the cabbage,” the soft-spoken waiter said, as if that were the only explanation for why the people at my table couldn’t stop eating it, this handful of raw cabbage leaves with little adornment beyond salt, a gloss of sesame oil, dark threads of preserved seaweed and sesame seeds flung on top.
In Japan, he went on, when you go to an izakaya — an informal Japanese establishment, neither quite restaurant nor tavern, that treats eating as fortification for drinking — you order cabbage first, as a test. If the kitchen proves it can pull off such a simple dish, you stay and order more food.
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OPEN Daily for dinner, except the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month.
RESERVATIONS Accepted.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS The entrance is one step up from the sidewalk; the restroom is narrow and not equipped with a handrail.
