EN Japanese Brasserie

435 Hudson Street, West Village, NY

7.4

map & more

Neighborhood
West Village

Cuisine
Japanese

Nearby
Canal Room
City Winery

212-647-9196

Official Website

Twitter

By Andrew Steinthal
June 16, 2011

Coming down with a nasty stomach reaction when you’re sitting at dinner is miserable. When you eat out as much as we do though, we’re bound to get unlucky every once in a while. We’re not negating points or holding the restaurant accountable for this incident, that would be unfair. Sh*t happens. However, we support full disclosure here at Immaculate Infatuation, and truth be told, I had to hightail it out of EN and get home as quickly as humanly possible to avoid a really bad situation.

People kind of lose their minds when you start talking about EN. Before dinner, we sent out a tweet asking for recommendations from Infatuation Nation and received tons of inspired replies. We ordered pretty much everything our people suggested, feasting our way through the deep menu. For small plates, the serving sizes were nice and the sake was awesome (albeit, quite expensive). We definitely had some good stuff – pork belly, fried chicken, garlic fried rice – but nothing to freak out over like we had hoped. Did we want to “bathe in bathtubs full of tofu” like one reader? Not exactly.

A cavernous monster of a restaurant, EN breaks down into a number of smaller nooks, each with their own feel and personality that are equally useful for dining in Big Groups or First/Early In The Game Dates. The big private rooms in the back require you to take your shoes off and eat on your knees like they do in Japan. That could make for quite an entertaining birthday party or office gathering. The well designed table alignments and islands in the main dining room are cozy and comfortable – a nice environment to roll the dice with that potential new squeeze.

EN is definitely a restaurant you need to try at least once. It’s a pretty unique spot. We’re not rushing back anytime soon, but we’re happy we know what it’s all about now.

Food Rundown:

O-Banzai
Also known as really tiny “Kyoto-style” appetizers. We were told to do the three for the table, but we could have easily skipped all of this and been better off. None of the shoya braised Okara, Buta Bara To Renkon No Kinpira (fancy name for a bland pork belly salad) or Shira AE (asparagus and bamboo shoots) added anything to the meal. Total snoozefest.

Tuna Sashimi
Five pieces of big eye tuna sashimi. How much do you think that would cost? Go ahead, guess. $15? $20 on the pricey side? No, no, try $25. A steep price to pay for tuna that isn’t even toro. Yes, it was excellent, but it left me feeling empty inside.

Freshly Made Scooped Tofu
Tofu isn’t something we normally get into. We don’t really know much about it aside from the fact that vegetarians seem to think its an acceptable substitute for meat. It’s not. But regardless of whether you’re love it or don’t, you are ordering tofu when you come to EN. It’s one of their signature dishes, and it’s mandatory. While we didn’t want to bathe in it, we enjoyed a few bites of the smooth, creamy cold tofu. The warm version of it we didn’t care for. The texture is a little gooey, and it kind of reminds us of porridge.

Miso Black Cod
Thanks to Nobu, miso black cod is one of the hardest dishes to order in NYC. Especially when everyone on Twitter tells you it’s incredible and you get excited about the possibilities. Was EN’s version good? Yes it was. But it’s nowhere near the Nobu standard. Fair or unfair, that’s just the reality.

Buri Kama Kara Age
This was definitely interesting. Three pieces of Yellowtail collar, lightly fried and served in delicious pepper-soy vinaigrette. Each bite actually tasted different, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Fried Chicken
Winner, winner fried chicken dinner. Boneless slices of juicy dark meat, this fried chicken was really damn good. Hands down, best thing on the menu. And at $12 for four nicely sized pieces, it’s the best deal too.

Kuroge Washugyu Yaki Shabu
The whole “cook your own steak on a hot stone at the table” thing is pretty hard to turn down, but that’s exactly what you need to do here. Not worth it. These thinly sliced Washugyu black angus short rib slices were a big time bummer. The beef just didn’t taste as good as it should have, and at $35, this is easily something we could have done without.

Sakamushi
Another dish that sounded delicious, but didn’t deliver on the promise. We’re thinking that sake steamed New Zealand green mussels with garlic butter and shoyu sounds incredible. Not the case. There was something a little too overcooked and little too mealy about them. Definitely skip.

Kurobuta Kakuni
Pork Belly swimming in a bowl of sansho miso with a cube of spinach, hard boiled egg and daikon radish. A little random, but the flavors worked quite well together. The belly was delicious, though maybe a little too fatty. We were quite happy with this dish.

Jyugokokumai Rice Pot
A clay grain rice pot of Japanese vegetables like hijiki & edamame. We had high expectations, but this was just OK. We probably should have gotten the salmon one instead, that one probably would have had more flavor than this, which was quite boring.

EN Garlic Shiso Fried Rice
Garlic fried rice. Delicious.