I randomly stumbled upon a mention of a new Japanese restaurant in the East Village called Seccu Yokota. Turns out the local blog evgrieve got a scoop and I was the first one to ever call for a reservation! I went last night and it is outstanding and an unbelievable value at $65.
One or both of the chefs worked at 1 or 8 in Williamsburg.
You can see some photos on my instagram:
They currently have a small wine and Sake list. I did not ask about corkage yet but I did ask if I could do a buyout with corkage included and they said yes.
buyout = you pay a set price to take the place for the entire night, invite a bunch of wine friends, everyone brings way too much wine, you get really drunk and open up great bottles of wine late into the evening and barely remember drinking some of them the next day.
Outstanding! Everything was very high calibre. The tempura was not at the high end of some the best places I have eaten in Japan but it was very good and the entirety of the meal at $65 was incredible.
Those “best places” in Japan are absolutely astounding, though. That kind of tempura doesn’t exist outside Japan, and I’m not entirely sure it can. It’s part of their mindset that doing one thing perfectly is as worthy of homage - or more worthy, even - than doing a panoply of things. It’s tough for other cultures to understand the value of perfecting one skill in that way, let alone pay through the nose for it.
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