Typhoon Lounge

BACK FROM MY LITTLE SUMMER BREAK, AND I HAVE SOME GREAT STORIES AND REVIEWS LINED UP FOR THE WEEKS AHEAD.  I had a really good review lined up for tonight, but I desperately need to warn the population of a serious threat to its well-being.

Ever have a meal experience so bad that it ruins your evening?  Eating at Typhoon Lounge was a mistake, and one that I won’t make again soon.  The service was bad, the food was terrible, and I have never felt so grossed out eating sushi.  I went straight home after eating here, purely out of fear for later.

Typhoon Lounge, 79 Saint Marks Pl, New York, NY‎ – (212) 979-2680‎

Typhoon Lounge, 79 Saint Marks Pl, New York, NY (212) 979-2680‎

Experience: 10

Food: 4

Bill: 8

Quality:  3

Creativity: 3

Flavor: 3

Service:  5

Total: 36
EXPERIENCE: I was in a great mood tonight as I walked into the Typhoon Lounge.  Good day of work, good evening of exploration, and I would finally get to try this Japanese restaurant I’ve always walked past.  It was fairly crowded inside of the dark, cavernous interior of Typhoon.  The walls are all dark brown and tan, giving the restaurant a tavern-like feel.  The walls are lit by lanterns and sconces, and I kind of liked the atmosphere.  Being alone, I decided to sit at the sushi bar.  I had to flag a waitress since a host didn’t seem to be available (and I was the only one waiting for about 5 minutes), and after I explained my situation, I was seated with a plethora of menus.  The sushi bar stretches along the Eastern wall of the restaurant entrance, after which the restaurant opens up to a larger seating area.  The sushi bar itself had see-through plastic guards between the sushi chef and myself, so that I could look at the fish.  Normally doing this is a delight, but as I gazed at the prepackaged uni and dry, science-class looking fish pieces, I began to wonder if I really should order the sushi.  Luckily, the menu had a special deal, 1/2 off a very generous sushi selection!  This would at least save me some money.  After ten minutes of watching some flies swarm around a half-prepared eel roll as the sushi chef prepared some other specialties with his bare, dirty looking hands, the waitress came to take my dinner order.  For the sake of the blog and the discount, I ordered an eel roll, a tempura roll (at least they’re cooked, but OH! the things I do for my readers!), and some nigiri sushi (yellowtail, salmon, and tamago).  The menu had a curious way of labeling their rolls, by the way.  Tamago was translated to egg custard (so I knew it wouldn’t be real egg), and crab was relabeled as ‘fish cake’ (so I knew it would be bad imitation crab).  At least they were honest and let me know what I was getting into.  I then asked the waitress for an appetizer recommendation to round out the meal, and she recommended a $6 beef stew, their most popular soup.  I happily agreed with this, and awaited my food as I watched even more cracked and dying raw fish get chopped into various rolls.  My stew came out about 10 minutes after I ordered it, hot and good smelling, and in a nice stone bowl.  I knew my sushi was still a LONG ways away, considering the sushi chef was filling orders one at a time, and mine was at the bottom of 5 order slips.  When my sushi did finally arrive, I had seen my sushi chef prepare it, and I really didn’t want to eat it.  I downed it anyway, and by the end of my meal I was completely bloated by the salty, rice-covered mess I had ingested.  The waitresses continued to shun my as I tried to call for my check, and the sushi chef, sensing my displeasure, tried to cheer me up with an on-the-house appetizer.  I was way to full to eat this, and I thought it must be some kind of cruelty to stare at me as I took a few bites and feigned enjoyment.  The waitress finally came with my crazy check (more details below), and after five more minutes of staring at my remaining food, took my plates away and allowed me to sign my way to freedom.  The staff did not seem happy at my presence during this meal, and the sushi chef was smiling, but in a very creepy kind of way.  I left Typhoon feeling gross and negative, with my unhappiness growing as my bloated body tried to make its way home.  I gave the experience a score of 10, because the restaurant actually had some nice points to it besides the staff and my food.  The decor was nice, and at least the place had ambiance, but everything there seemed to exist to make me feel worse about my day in some way, and its an experience I do not soon want to repeat.

FOOD: I dug into my stew, and the first bite was delicious.  Not too watery, with beef broth cooked to tasty perfection.  That is until my second bite – that was when I got my first spoon-full of grease.  The soup may have had the right flavors, but once all the parts of it were inadvertently stirred together (I wish I had skimmed the top and left the rest alone), the soup was salty, slimy, oily, and the beef pieces were fatty and hard to eat.  I’m sure this is a hit or miss dish, but I used to order stews like this in Japan (and Los Angeles!) all the time, and I never ate anything this greasy or salty.  I set down my spoon and hoped that the rest of the meal would be better.    The sushi was half-off, and the menu said something about needing to finish it all, so I wasn’t quite sure if I needed to eat everything I ordered or not.  I was okay with this idea either way, since I only ordered two rolls and some pieces of fish.  I quickly noticed the amount of rice the sushi chef was piling on top of each roll, though, and I gulped.  My tempura roll was comprised of a single piece of dried shrimp tempura that had been sitting out since I arrived at the restaurant (and probably even longer), a few scoops of flying fish roe out of a saran wrapped cup, and a LOT of rice.  The roll was topped with a glob of sticky, dark eel sauce.  I figured at least the roll would be sweet at this rate, but to my surprise, the eel sauce was pure, liquid SALT.  This salt sauce completely masked the already flavorless shrimp and rice, and with the addition of salty fish eggs, the roll was almost inedible.  I downed about half of it before my next roll came out, and I gasped in fear.  The eel roll was ALSO covered in this fake eel sauce.  I waited for my water glass to be refilled (which took FOREVER), and used the magical clear tap water of the gods (it seemed that way at the time), to help me ingest piles of soggy, flavorless eel and cucumber wrapped again in a huge portion of rice.  By the time my nigiri sushi came out, I was already bloated from the amount of rice and salt sauce and oily stew I had ingested, and already felt a bit like I wanted to pray to some porcelain goddess somewhere for it to go away.  The thin slices of yellowtail and salmon had come from the bar I cringed at earlier, and I bravely tried each piece.  The yellowtail was fishy and had hints of flavors (such as bad avocado and fish skin) that raw fish ought not have.  It left a terrible taste in my mouth that I tried to cancel out with the salmon, but that fish was even worse, and I left half of the piece of sushi on my plate (an insult?  Maybe, but I wanted this place to have it).  My tamago egg custard fell apart as I picked it up (crumbled, actually), and was flavorless enough that I was able to use it as a foil for this egregiously salty meal.  When I finally finished (or half-finished) everything, I didn’t care about the ‘eat everything’ rule anymore, and luckily, neither did they…or so I thought.  As I mentioned above, I received a strange bowl of pickles at the end of my meal, and there were three things in it.  Kim-Chee spiced radish, which tasted gooey and rank, served with also slimy cucumber and seaweed shavings.  I took a few bites out of respect, but this was probably the worst thing I tried all night, and with no water left, I really wanted to up-chuck it on the spot.  I was so full and digusting feeling after the meal that I left unsure of why anyone would EVER recommend a place like this to me.  Everything from the kitchen and sushi bar seemed terrible, and it got even worse when I received my bill.  I gave the Food a score of 4 for having a bad selection, using too much, chewy rice, and not taking care of a truly disgusting sushi bar.  Even the kitchen food, pretending to be authentic, was greasy, salty, and almost inedible.   Quality, Creativity, and Flavor all received scores of 3.  The quality sucked, but the food was mostly edible (the salmon lowered the score to the DO NOT EAT level).  The flavors were almost null and void.  At least Typhoon thought of adding fish eggs to the tempura roll, but c’mon, salt with salt?!  What are they thinking!  The creativity was just not there.  This restaurant offered everything most Japanese tapas bars offer, but with little NY variety, and everything seemed to be a mixture of the same five Japanese ingredients served in different ways.  The only thing that changed on the menu was the meat selection, and after this meal, I don’t trust the fatty beef or the rotten-looking fish.  Thanks to this terrible look at how one can ruin a Japanese meal, I am going to be more cautious than ever about where I go to eat Japanese food of any kind from this day forward.

BILL: My bill came, and it was for $30 after tip.  WHAT THE HELL?!  I ordered two rolls and 3 pieces of nigiri sushi at half off and a $6 stew (and a $2 soda) and I owed $25?!  The math just didn’t add up.  Turns out they fully charged me for a roll I didn’t finish, so beware the 50% off sushi deal, it’s a bit of a scam.  I didn’t want to get into a fight over how salty the food was (just didn’t have it in me after this meal), so I paid and took off straight for home as I formulated this review.  I gave the bill a score of 8 for being tricky and pricey, yet still offering some discounts if you can figure them out.  I gave the service a score of 5, because they were slow and average, though they tried to be friendly at times, and I did get a nice after-dinner salad, though it was disgusting and served at the worst possible time.

I swear to you from the bottom of my heart, do NOT let someone convince you that this food is authentic Japanese food and therefore ‘different.’  I have eaten dozens of meals in Japan and NONE of them tasted like this.  Japanese food is defined by its subtle flavors, so there’s not a TON of salt or grease in most of it.  Mayonnaise is the strongest food you’ll probably have in Japan, and that’s because it’s comprised of eggs and oil and NOTHING ELSE.  The food here is awful, it really is.  I felt sick after eating at Typhoon Lounge, and have reviewed it accordingly.  If you are going to have to eat here, I suggest getting something without rice and without grease, if you can find such a thing on the menu.  Avoid the eel sauce, avoid the fish, and for the love of sushi, do not make any after dinner plans.

I hope you all have a pleasant night.  Now that I’m away from that restaurant and able to get some rest, I’m certainly going to try to.

Zen Restaurant

Zen is one of many sushi restaurants located along St. Marks Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Like many of the Japanese restaurants along this strip, the restaurant offers a variety of Japanese foods, including ramen, sushi, teriyaki, and some grilled options.  While the food at Zen is pretty tasty, and the nigiri sushi is offered at half price, the other food options are overpriced and rather simple, and I find I only end up at this restaurant by a friend’s suggestion, never on my own.

Zen Restaurant, 31 Saint Marks Pl, New York, NY

Zen Restaurant, 31 Saint Marks Pl, New York, NY (212) 533-6855

Experience: 14

Food: 16

Bill: 16

Quality:  7

Creativity: 5

Flavor: 6

Service:  6

Total: 70

EXPERIENCE: Nestled far into the streets of St. Mark’s Place, Zen restaurant seems like a little ramen house as I enter its doors.  Once inside, I can see that this Japanese diner stretches inward, with a wooden drink bar beside the tables at the entrance, and a sushi bar sitting in the back room.  The wooden tables and neon lighting make Zen feel like every cheap diner I’ve eaten at in NY, and the worn plastic menu reminded me even more of the late night eateries I spent so many college weekends at.  The modern art on the walls further took away from any Japanese feel inside Zen, except for some paper lanterns on the ceiling.  After finding out that the sushi here is always half-off (why don’t they just adjust menu prices for this?!), I went with a selection of nigiri  and a miso soup for lunch.     I quickly received my miso, but it was a good fifteen minutes between the time I ordered and the time I received my sushi.  I finished the food quickly, but I waited another ten minutes for the quiet, frowning waitress to return and deliver my bill.  The service I received and the restaurant itself was in no way Zen, as the name implies, but it also wasn’t terrible.  I gave the experience a score of 14 because of this average service and decoration.  I have had the ramen at Zen before and had a similar experience, and it seems obvious to me that with a friendlier staff and quicker service, this place could easily grab a higher score in this category.

FOOD: The white miso I received first with my meal was served Japanese-style, in a small drinking bowl.  The green onions and tofu tasted like they were freshly added to a dried miso powder, so the soup tasted better than many I’ve recently had.  My sushi consisted of two pieces each of yellowtail, salmon, eel, and tamago.  The yellowtail was flavorful and rich, but carried a fishy flavor (which is never good) behind that depth.  The salmon was similar, with deep flavors mixed with a strong fishy taste and slightly oily consistency (also never good).  The eel tasted very good, but it was not prepared correctly.  The eel was not properly boned, and it was mushy.  Mushy eel is okay when prepared raw, but eel is almost never prepared this way in the USA, and should always be grilled to a crispy yet tender finish.  Without any satisfying crunch in my eel, I tried the tamago, which was cold and pre-refrigerated, but at least the egg was thick, freshly made, and not too sweet.  I gave my total food score at Zen a 16 because the quality was above average, yet still fishy in flavor and the eel and tamago were prepared incorrectly.  Quality received a 7 because of the flavors in the fish, while creativity received a 5 for bland and average menu options.  Flavor received a 6 because the uninteresting tastes were just too plain, and every tasty piece of food I ate here today had at least one thing wrong with it.  If a restaurant is going to serve ramen and rolls at the prices this place does, they can’t expect me to be a frequent customer when there are so many delicious and cheap Japanese restaurants in Zen Restaurant’s vicinity.

BILL: I’m sure that the prices on Zen’s menu are so high because of the surrounding college scene, but I still have a hard time believing that this place wouldn’t be infinitely more popular be switching their sushi deals up with some cheaper ramen options.  Sushi is half-price, but it is also not great, so my attention at Zen will always turn to the noodles and teriyaki in the future.  Sadly, many of the ramen dishes are at leat $10, and the teriyaki lunches aren’t too reasonably priced either.  My bill, thanks to a cheap miso and sushi, came out to a reasonable $15, so I’ll give the bill an above average score of 16, but if they want a perfect twenty, they’re going to need to rethink their other prices.  I gave service a score of 6 for being slow and negative, but at least polite and attentive.

This review is shorter than my others, but their really isn’t much to say about Zen in the end.  The sushi is cheap enough, but the food was only average, and there are other remarkably cheap and delicious restaurants to try nearby.   My hunt for the perfect sushi restaurant continues, as does my search for a cheap ramen specialty house.  If anyone has any suggestions on ramen places that I should try, please comment below!

Go Wasabi

I went to the most confusing sushi restaurant in New York today.

Go Wasabi, 34-02 30th Ave, Astoria, NY

Go Wasabi, 34-02 30th Ave, Astoria, NY, (718) 204-7354‎

Experience: 13

Food: 17

Bill: 14

Quality:  7

Creativity: 6

Flavor: 7

Service:  5

Total: 69

EXPERIENCE: The interior of Go Wasabi is a little bit like an art deco nightmare mixed with a shoddy sushi-bar interior.  Aspects of the artwork were interesting to look at, such as the ocean-like green, blue, and white painted walls, or the hanging blue slab of ovular concrete over the sushi bar.  The angled glass style decorating the area at the back of the restaurant was also interesting, but none of these decorations really mixed with the other.  With the ceiling reflecting an underwater adventure, and the floor  a wooden black with metal chairs, I felt as if I were sitting on a sinking ship in the deep abyss.   The waiters at this restaurant did nothing special to pull me out of this dark hole, but they didn’t make the experience that bad by any means.  They were only slow and frowning throughout the meal.  As I opened the menu, I was dumbfounded at how it was organized.  Four sections of various rolls (regular, inside-out, giant sumo, and deluxe rolls) were divided into subcategories (half-sumos and soy wrap rolls), then dispersed all over the menu.  While I attempted to figure out where the regular inside-out rolls were located, I was further confused by three pages of specials, also placed in random locations in the menu.  Lunch meal specials were at the back of the menu, but did not include sushi, dinner sushi menus were found before the main roll selection, and close to the front of the menu were the lunch sumo roll specials.  It turns out, this was the section to stick to today, but it took me a while to figure that out.  I eventually found what I wanted for lunch, and after waiting a good 7 minutes for the waiter to return, I ordered a shrimp tempura sumo roll lunch with salad, a piece of yellowtail and eel nigiri sushi, and a regular salmon roll.  I’m still not sure why I ordered this combination of sushi, but it seemed like the cheapest way to make use of this labyrinth-like menu.  My salad came out almost immediately, and I finished it quickly.  It took another 15 minutes or so for the sushi chef to make my lunch (there were two young chefs there, but only one prepping my food.  Considering I was the only one in the restaurant, this confused me a little), and another five minutes for the waiter to realize it was sitting at the bar to be served.  After finally getting my food and enjoying it enough to make me forget about this strange experience, I was forced to sit another 10 minutes, wondering where my waiters went (they appeared to not be in the restaurant), before one of them magically returned to hand me my check.  While a decent meal made my time at Go Wasabi worth it, I’m not sure I’ll be back there any time soon, as pretending to be floating debris while eating is not my favorite dining experience.  I gave the experience a score of 13 to reflect all of this confusion and chaos that even the calm, modern music couldn’t seem to pull me out of.

FOOD: At least the food at Go Wasabi was another matter entirely.  To answer the question that immediately entered my head as I sat down to eat here:  Yes, the wasabi was very good, and very hot.  While only one wall of the restaurant was painted wasabi green, the flavor of their horseradish definitely defended their name.  The first thing I received was a green salad.  This salad used mixed greens, carrots, and cucumber, and had a small amount of overly sweetened orange ginger dressing.  By stirring the salad around and messily dispersing the dressing within the tiny salad bowl, I managed to make it taste pretty good, whetting my appetite for the main course.  Too many minutes later I received my food.  The prominent thing on the white, square, lunch plate was the shrimp tempura roll, which was as big as the menu suggested.  Eight huge pieces of roll filled with fresh, tasty cucumber, even better avocado, and two pieces of shrimp tempura were topped with lots of overly sweetened eel sauce, drizzled fancily around half of the plate.  The shrimp tempura in the roll were cooked very nicely.  The shrimp within were big and tasty, flavored with black pepper, and the fried outside was not too oily, and crispy but soft enough not to rip at my mouth.  The rice on the roll was warm and held to the roll well (this many ingredients can often lead to weak rolls), and pieces were just big enough to be eaten in one bite.  That bite is where the problem lies, however.

At sushi restaurants, I look for variety in my meal, and the only way to get a discounted roll at Go Wasabi is to get this huge sumo that is still too expensive to order with anything else.  For the same price as a three-roll special at most sushi places in New York I was able to get the tempura roll and a piece of eel sushi.  Without the lunch special price, this roll costs over $10, too, which is something I would never order.  Go Wasabi offers many of these rolls halved down to four pieces for half the price, but these rolls really weren’t so big that four pieces would ever be worth $6.  Why can’t this restaurant just charge 7$ for six pieces like everyone else?  The point of this rant is, I don’t want to pay too much for half-a-roll, nor do I want to pay less, but still an entire lunch’s fee, for just one giant roll.  At least they had a selection of four small reasonably priced rolls on the menu.  I went with the salmon roll today.

The salmon in this roll was flavorful, but not oily, and while it wasn’t amazing fish, for $4 I couldn’t complain.  None of the raw fish at Go Wasabi was salty, which I was ecstatic about.  This simple roll was better than the tempura roll, though, and proof that you don’t need deluxe insanity to serve delicious food. The yellowtail sushi I ordered was also very good, though still not perfect.  It was reasonably prices, and tasted fresh and flavorful, but lacked the melt-in-your-mouth flavor kick that the best yellowtail can give.  The eel sushi was the day’s biggest disappointment.  This eel was covered in sweet eel sauce, and the fish within was flavorless, soft, and full of bones, all features that no eel sushi should have.  I imagine they stuff this eel mush within all of their  general rolls, and hence don’t need to worry about its quality in the more complex offerings, but c’mon, if they’re going to advertise as having a Korean grilled selection, the least they can do is cook their eel correctly.  The korean section, by the way, consisted of a couple of heavily overpriced Korean classics, such as an $18 dollar Bi Bim Bop.  I ended up giving the food a score of 17 for having overly sweetened sauces on rolls that were otherwise delicious.  The sushi was tasty and fairly high in quality, but the eel was average, which resulted in my quality score of 7 instead of 8.  Creativity received a 6 because Go Wasabi lacked variety on their huge menu, and seemed to cover everything in salty sauce or spicy tuna.  They did still have a good selection of creative enough options to keep the score above a 5.  The flavor score received a 7, subtracted by the eel and the sauces, but still high because of the peppery, lovely shrimp tempura and remarkably tasty salmon.  Thanks to this tasty food, I do not regret my meal at Go Wasabi, but the bill I would receive and the altogether experience makes it unlikely that I will return for more of this decent food.

BILL: The bill at Go Wasabi was a real issue, because, as I discussed above, I didn’t want to pay so much for one lunch roll, but I wanted enough food to fill myself up.  Go Wasabi offers either, cheap, one-roll lunches, or overpriced dinners.  I wound up paying $20 dollars for my meal, and while the amount of food I received made that price reasonable, I really didn’t need that much food.  I simply wanted to try the restaurant’s eel, yellowtail, rolls, and tempura, and this overpriced lunch was really the only way to do this in the end.  This is why I gave the bill a score of 14.  The four regular rolls on the menu were reasonably priced, but everything else on the menu was some kind of overpriced deluxe roll.  They try to trick customers on the menu by charging less for some rolls, but giving only half of the quantity!  The prices for the quality at Go Wasabi were really unacceptable at the end of the meal, and considering my lunch cost $20, I don’t even want to imagine what the dinners would be like.  The score is higher than it would be thanks to that salmon roll and nigiri sushi, the only reasonably priced fair on the menu.  Stick to that tiny section, and this restaurant is actually pretty decent.  Decent enough to return to for another meal, though?  Not likely.  For lazy, slow, but still effective enough service without a smile, I gave the service an low, average score of 5.

Thinking back on my experience at Go Wasabi (it is fun to say), the food at was pretty good, and the simpler pieces of nigiri sushi and basic rolls were (except the eel) altogether better than my deluxe selection.  Sadly, the fish here, much like the restaurant’s seemingly inherent theme, gets lost deep in the sea of an incomprehensible and overpriced menu.  The lame service, strange style, and sugary food all contribute to a feeling of deception and discomfort that even decent food couldn’t improve upon.