EN Japanese Brasserie

Back in July when Ken’s family came to visit, we dined at EN Japanese Brasserie in the west village. The restaurant features Japanese kaiseki-style dining (multiple courses, at EN Brasserie the dishes are made to share). The restaurant is known for many things, including their sake collection, their homemade tofu, and the expansive menu of dishes, both raw and cooked. We were a party of five and they offered us one of their private rooms on the second floor (the rooms usually require a minimum of $75/pp, but there was a last minute cancellation). We scooped up the invitation and headed to the private room with the hostess. All of us before dinner started:

We started with some green tea while we looked through the menu:

We were deciding between the tasting and ordering a la carte and decided to order a little bit of everything from the menu instead of all getting the same a la carte tasting. We ordered a lot of different dishes (focusing on the cooked dishes since my in laws don’t eat raw fish). We did, however, order a few pieces of toro for me, Teresa and Ken:

The dishes come out as they are ready so after the toro we received the freshly made tofu:

The tofu is served either cold or warm (we selected warm) alongside a container of wari-joyu, which is a mixture of soy sauce and fish broth:

The tofu had a pleasant taste but was too watery; I’ve tried making tofu before unsuccessfully (I made really good soy milk and added gypsum powder to it, but not enough because it was the same texture as this tofu).

Next, sushi with cooked crab and asparagus with a soy wrapper:

We ordered the broiled Alaskan black cod marinated in saikyo miso:

The dish was flavorful and very rich – on par with Nobu and Dieci.

Next, a mochi croquette with potato and Hudson Valley duck, served in a dashi broth:

The dish was really rich and too many textures going on (I didn’t know it was duck until I looked at the menu again after the meal).

We also ordered the lobster ishiyaki; stone grilled lobster with butter miso sauce:

The lobster was barely cooked on a stone and very buttery and sweet.

We had to order the kurobuta kakuni, the braised Berkshire pork belly in sansho miso with egg, spinach, and daikon:

My father-in-law loves pork belly so once we saw it on the menu we had to order it! The portion was very hearty and everyone was able to try the pork belly and the daikon.

We also ordered the stone grilled organic chicken, served with wasabi salt, sansho salt and garlic shoyu:

All three pairings were good, although I preferred the garlic shoyu sauce with a touch of wasabi salt.

Finally, our last course was the truffle rice pot, which takes 40 minutes to prepare! The clay pot is brought to your table:

Then lots of black truffles are shaved onto the rice:

And finally, the rice is served to everyone:

The truffles were very fragrant alongside the mushrooms and the rice – a bit expensive but worth the splurge!

Everyone enjoyed the the dinner and the best part – EN Japanese Brasserie does Apple Pay via Opentable so we didn’t even have to fight over the bill! I paid for it while we were “waiting” for our plates to be cleared. Such a genius feature from Opentable/Apple!