Yopparai
“Yasai Yaki – wonderful accompaniment to the grilled meats
Assorted (6) Oden – soul-soothing soup.”
“Amazing izakaya that makes you feel you have been transported to Tokyo.”
“All dishes were excellent but several particularly excelled including the Washu Beef Tataki, karaage, and Shrimp and Cod dumpling.”
Yopparai
Takes Reservations: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Price range.
$$$ Price range $31-60
8 reviews
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Yopparai has a traditional and varied Japanese food menu and a wide array of sakes available by the bottle or by 6oz servings. I quite enjoyed coming here for small plates and appetizers, we tried items from every part of the menu.
This is a great place to come with a group if you want to try a bunch of different sakes for a reasonable price.
CHOBERIGU!
I heard some great raves from Japanese friends of mine about this place. We went downstairs. Nope. Can't be next door. Wait there's a buzzer that looked like the website. The restaurant is located in the vestibule of a residential entry. The intimately cozy restaurant has choice of seat along the wall or along the bar. The interestingly designed seat maximized space as storage for your coat and bag.
The food here is exceptional as well as service. The warm yudoufu with seafood was delicious. Silky smooth tofu. I could have had a big bowl of this and be happy. The grilled squid was tender, nicely charred. Tsukune was equally delicious. Shrimp tempura was light, flavorful. We did the 3 assorted Oden. The egg, radish and fish cake in a salty soy broth. I think the favorite dish of was the Kakuni. Pork and egg in a simmering clay pot.
Least favorite dish. Tripe stew. Not that I don't' like tripe. I love tripe. But they skinned the tripe like naked sheeps and it was in the same broth as the Oden with radishes.
Like cigarettes Izakayas, should come with a warning label that is hazardous to your bank account. You come hungry. You leave empty wallet. The portions are small to be admired. Savored. Enjoyed.
II KAMO SHIRENAI!
I badly wanted to give this place a 5 star review considering how this restaurant was filled with amazing expectations and awesome feedback.
My friend found this place and got me super excited as I looked at the delicious pictures. We picked out what we were goign to eat and started our adventurous meal.
Sadly, I was bitterly disappointed by my experience here. While it had the setup and the atmosphere and the decor/feel of a legitimate Japanese sake bar, I find the quality of this place was lacking…..The presentation was misleading indeed.
I came into the restaurant and was surprised by how hard it was to enter the place (you have to buzz in). While the service was good (they switched plates and gave you warm towels and showed you how to eat, made sure you were comfortable..let you ground your own wasabi)…I think thats the only good thing I can say about this place. (I only had the food here/I did not drink the sake so I can't comment on that).
We started with the sashimi appetizer. Things were going well until the tuna (it definitely tasted like it was frozen and not thawed properly and I also saw pink fluid left over on my plate from it…) This is NOT a good sign. This means that the fish was frozen too long (or frozen/refrozen and the meat disintegrated). I was thinkign in my head WTF.
I also did not taste the uni flavor in the uni itself (which is weird because of all the times that I have had it from cheaper to most expensive restaurants, I could taste the uni taste). My friend said this was probably the best part of our meal…but I felt relaly iffy about it. It's weird that it didn't taste like uni..I 'm not going to lie I was starting to have major doubts about this place.
We then had the simmered tofu dish with mushrooms. This was good, but not extremely great….moving on. We ordered the beef tongue which was very hard in consistency and not cut thinly enough to be considered very good…I also don't think it was cooked or spiced very properly. Then came the pork belly, which was very rough and chewy (the taste was fine but the consistency was definitely off for the pork belly to taste any good)…..disappointing izakaya at best.
We got squid guts, which was normal and had offal kind of taste that I expected. We didn't drink so maybe it wouldve been better with sake.
The only redeeming dish was probably the miso rice cake, which was pan fried deliciously and filling….other than the nice prsentation, service and this miso rice cake…I was really going ot give this place a 1 star review.
I can't call myself an expert on izakaya, but I would much rather have dishes and spend my money at Ootoya or Sakagura where the pricing is comparable and the quality guaranteed to be much better.
This place was absolutely delicious. Very small inside, expensive, but really good!
Had the yuku sake cocktail, and as someone who doesn't like sake or drink much I finished the cocktail – it was so good!
Had SO many dishes here, and they were all great. Salmon roe over brown rice,
Hanpen – rated fish and yam made into cake, grilled sea eel. My favorite was the hotate butter, grilled scallops in butter. Oh my god.
I would definitely recommend this place and would come back!
This kind of place really makes me love NYC even more that I can have my japanese flavors in wonderful dishes made with care, in a quiet intimate space without traveling back to Japan. This is a quiet but sophisticated Sake bar for grownups (not "old") with quality food and service.
As in sake bar, their drink menu is a nice list of sake, 1 sake cocktail, and 1 beer. That's it. But the food menu is extensive and well organized. Most of the dish portion is good for 2 people to share, as in the seating of this place is mostly for 2 people (small tables or 2-person benches at the bar). Their attention to detail is amazing in all aspects, especially on the food – they even make their own ponzu, natto, shiokara, etc.
Loved: wagyu tataki, gyu tongue, any of the robata, natto (argh! cannot have enough), duck, and hojicha creme brulee (the best I've had).
It is definitely on the pricey side, but it's worth spending a intimate evening over great sake and fantastic food. The feel is still casual and easy, but they do not compromise on quality. It's not stuffy, not a scene, and not loud (some jazz in the background). The staff is welcoming and courteous.
After waiting ages to try this place, I was seriously disappointed. Save your money, go to Sakagura.
Maybe it was the bad tuna that turned the whole meal sour, regardless I think the place is a little overpriced. We started things off with a sashimi platter, with a grate your own wasabi root and paddle. The fish was fine until we got to the tuna, which had lost its structural integrity and was soggy. I don't know what led to this, but it seems like freezer burn could be the issue. The chef slicing the fish should have noticed how terrible the quality was and any self respecting restaurant would not have served it to anyone.
The rest of the meal turned into an uphill battle as we had become critical of the place. The salted squid in guts was fine, the agedashi tofu had some good mushrooms on top, and the grilled pork belly skewer was decent enough. The grilled beef tongue though, was sad and chewy. Some of the pieces on the plate were so thin and were obviously scraps that should not been served in this manner. The redeeming item of the meal was the toasted rice cake with miso on top. It was an excellent end to a lackluster meal. Definitely not coming back.
Yopparai (adj.) – definition: drunk… in the Japanese.
First off, this is not an izakaya. To be more apt, this is a sake bar at its most spatially inefficient… the land of the rising sun would be quite proud. And if it was any indication, my Japanese compadre in attendance that night was quite pleased with this joint (as was the group of young Nihon-jin femmes, celebrating a birthday of one of their own, at the table adjacent to ours). I should mention that my party was one of the only two to actually get a table with a party of four (the birthday onna no hito was the only other one with such an honor).
On a Friday night, it takes a good bit of luck… or a reservation… to score a table. Fortunately, my party had a bit of luck on our side. We were even more lucky to have such an impressive sake selection at our disposal, and a native Japanese lady in our party to guide us in our endeavor to ultimately become "yopparai" (see what I did there?!?).
Sake comes in two sizes: the six, or the 12. No special deals on getting the bigger one… twice as big, so twice as much… makes sense. Per the guidance of sake expert, we went with three of the 12s. First one we sampled was Kikusui, it was clear and light with some floral notes… good booze. Second one we tried, the Shiragiku Nigori, was one of the more cloudy "unfiltered" sake… good booze too, but good-er booze then the first??? I guess it depends on who you ask. But, we all agreed that the last one we got, the "Sophisticated Woman", was the bestest of all of them. It was as light and clear as the first, but hit as hard as the second… or maybe the accumulation of booze was starting to get me soused??? After all, we hadn't eaten that much…
Which prompted us to think about food options at this place! To reiterate the sentiments of the first paragraph, this place is a sake bar, and not an izakaya in the traditional sense (though the latter term is oft thrown around in America). . The nuances are far more apparent than the subtleties of, let's say, a gastropub and a sports bar. One such nuance (and the only one that matters)… no beer here! Game, set, match for me. I will say this though, the food offerings here aren't an afterthought, they are done with a great amount of authenticity, care, and precision that are worthy of what could go into a very upscale izakaya (…with beer! Though "upscale" defeats the purpose of an izakaya if you ask me). But enough about the izakaya vs. sake bar talk… the food here is worthy for either, though a subsection of the menu specializes in such standards that "pair well with sake," as was advised by our waitress. One such item is salted squid in squid guts, that is the legit description… interesting, but we opted for less daring fare in the form of steamed edamame, gyutan, braised pork belly, and steamed eggs with crab meat and shrimp.
It's really tough to screw up edamame, and this place did just fine with theirs. It was presented in a sexy little wooden box that Josh V., circa his college days, may have gone clepto over such a thing. The pork belly was extremely tasty and so tender that it fell apart at the touch, really good stuff. The gyutan, or cow tongue in English vernacular, was super moist, tender, and cooked a perfect rare… tasty as hell. And the steamed egg was super hot, and cooked the way a steamed egg should be… the tasty (seafood?) broth brought a rich flavor to the eggs, and the seafood in the eggs just elevated the lowly egg into a level of decadence that would be akin to putting the Queen of England's jewels onto a hooker… it's a very good compliment.
Food here is a bit pricey for the quantity, but this isn't the sort of restaurant to stuff yourself (and again, it's more a sake bar than anything else… even more so than a restaurant). If anything, as per our Japanese guest and sake connoisseur, this is the kind of place to "seal the deal," so you wouldn't wanna be slowing yourself down with too much food anyway huh? But feel free get a little tipsy on sake in a quiet, exclusive feeling (not a lot of seats and you need to ring a doorbell to get in), cozy (tight seating arrangements… two-seater stools at the bar area if you don't get a table), and dimly lit establishment such as this pre-session… this is quite the appropriate place to get the "deal" going.
Yopparai is a cozy high end japanese tapas restaurant tucked in Lower East Side. I came here with a friend on a Tuesday night with a 7pm reservation. Right when I first walked in, I was treated really well right away. Everyone was so friendly and they store our coats in a cabinet below our seats. Our server was extremely attentive – she took the time to walk through the restaurant's more popular dishes and always made sure our waters were refilled.
The food is great quality. Portions are small, but the flavors and attention to detail were impressive. We ordered the Beef tongue, Salmon roe and flake over brown rice, oden's assortment of 3 items, and Kakumi. Each dish is presented on a different type of pottery or dishware. The plating was fun to look at and I felt like I was experiencing amazing Japanese delicacies. The setting is intimate with most of the tables for a party of two. We sat at the bar, which was fun to see the staff preparing the dishes.