NetaPhoto: Melissa Hom/New York Journal
Sushi connoisseurs choose their eating places in all kinds of finicky, hypersensitive methods. They focus obsessively on the standard of the rice (smooth is nice, too smooth is unhealthy), or the feel of the tamago egg sushi (too candy may be very unhealthy), and even the colour of the gari ginger (pink gari is the kiss of dying). For the non-connoisseur, nonetheless, the only approach to choose the recognition, and even the standard, of a topflight sushi restaurant within the metropolis is by the variety of serious-faced gents in neatly pressed shirts twiddling their smartphones on the bar. Overlook about Kobe beef and the $120 prime rib for 2. For the brand new, postmillennial era of monetary titans and Web billionaires, uncooked fish is the last word trophy meals. It received’t offer you a coronary heart assault. It’s loaded with refined snob enchantment. If money is not any object, because the high-roller habitués of eating places like Masa within the Time Warner Heart and Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo will inform you, there’s no extra theatrical, cosmopolitan meal on the planet.
Like their beef-loving forebears, members of the sushi energy elite are inclined to journey in packs and dine in the identical rotation of trusted, ridiculously costly institutions time and again. However these days I’ve seen increasingly more of them congregating at an unassuming sushi restaurant known as Neta, which opened final month among the many scruffy bars and cut-rate West Village shoe shops alongside eighth Road close to Sixth Avenue. Within the custom of discreetly formidable sushiyas in all places, the façade of the storefront area is painted in black trim and coated in pale curtains. There are a couple of tables set alongside the partitions inside, however a lot of the slender, railroad-car-size area is taken up by the bar, which is manufactured from polished ebony. Except for a random vase of cherry blossoms within the nook, the gray-shaded room is so devoid of artifice and ornament that one among my friends in contrast it to a “company check kitchen” within the suburbs of New Jersey.
You received’t discover giant-mushroom-and-rice rolls feathered with shavings of black Périgord truffle at any of the check kitchens in Jersey, nonetheless, or dabs of rose-colored tuna tartare, which the 2 younger cooks at Neta serve in a bit of cocktail glass piled with Beluga caviar spooned from a sky-blue tin. Nik Kim and Jimmy Lau are protégés of the nice boom-era sushi godhead Masa Takayama, whose purchasers at Masa famously fork over $1,000 (earlier than tax, tip, and a drink) to nibble on slabs of foie gras shabu-shabu and iridescent shreds of feminine snow crab flown in, at huge expense, from the Sea of Japan. Kim labored underneath Takayama in Los Angeles and was the pinnacle chef at Masa when the restaurant opened in New York in 2004. Lau is a veteran of Masa’s different Time Warner Heart offshoot, Bar Masa, and he and Kim have clearly designed Neta (the title means “recent ingredient” in Japanese) as a extra informal, Zen-like different to the outdated mom ship uptown.
Many of the fish on the comparatively spare sushi record at Neta come from “native” waters (across the U.S.), one of many sushi cooks instructed me, and in contrast to in additional conventional eating places, the menu incorporates a whole sushi-roll part dedicated to greens. I most well-liked the generously portioned grilled-maitake-mushroom roll, scattered with black truffle ($19), to the cocktail glass of caviar and toro tartare, which value $48 and disappeared in two bites. The primary small-plate gadgets we sampled included sections of candy Maine scallop dressed with uni, garlic, and soy butter ($18); shreds of Dungeness crab tossed with wild parsley ($18); and wraps of crispy duck pores and skin and foie gras folded in skinny slices of cucumber, which tasted extra of duck than of foie gras ($19). However none of those dutifully executed dishes are as satisfying as a easy serving of trumpet mushrooms, which the cooks sauté in spherical slices, then stack between thatches of thinly crisped potatoes spiced with serrano peppers. Bluefin tuna is the filet mignon of the sushi jet set nowadays, and there are 4 totally different cuts of this endangered delicacy obtainable at Neta, starting from chewy, faintly charred suji sinew, lower from the collar of the fish, to clean, soapy-colored strips of fatty o-toro stomach ($12), which dissolve in a decadent slick of richness as they slip down the again of your throat. My sushi-loving high-roller buddy thought the rice underneath his pearly, $6 piece of hotate (scallop) was “simply this facet of gummy,” however he had no complaints in regards to the pink sarawa (mackerel), which the cooks gently lacquer with soy or ice-cool dabs of uni flown in to the restaurant day by day. Should you don’t really feel like forking over $28 for the signature, bluefin-rich Neta roll, I counsel the cheaper vegetable rolls, which the cooks stuff with shaved spears of asparagus, fried shiitake, or chunks of candy potato garnished with shiso leaves frizzled in a tempura batter.
Neta doesn’t supply the wildly esoteric vary of sushi and sashimi that you just’ll discover at a number of the grander, extra established sushi palaces (no grilled fugu intestines, no uncommon species of needlefish), and at this early date, the environment will be disrupted by occasional glitches in service. You’ll be able to sip eight types of sake whereas ready in your subsequent course to reach, nonetheless, together with an honest choice of “reserve” beers from Sapporo and Prague. Should you really feel like splurging, there are two omakase eating choices obtainable ($95 and $135), and you may wash them down with a $400 bottle of ’02 Dom Pérignon Champagne. The one dessert is an easy iced granita. You may get it flavored with recent grapefruit, and it’s served the best way Masa does uptown, in a tiny cocktail glass with a bit of bamboo spoon.
Neta
61 W. eighth St., nr. Sixth Ave.; 212-505-2610
Hours: Monday by means of Saturday 5 to 10:30 p.m.
Costs: Small plates, $5 to $48; sushi and sashimi, $3 to $28.
Ultimate Meal: Dungeness crab, king mushrooms, Spanish mackerel, uni, o-toro, grilled-maitake roll with black truffles, spicy salmon canapé roll, grapefruit granita.
Observe: The Chef’s Selection omakase is $95; the high-roller possibility, at $135, contains caviar and uni.
Scratchpad: Three stars for the elements, high quality, and method, minus a star for the marginally rushed service and spartan environment.