Roughly translating to “Big door” or “Large household”, Ootoya is a popular Japanese restaurant that originated in Tokyo in 1958. In fact, few years ago, while being in the Japanese capital, we had a lunch there, where they serve the same concept called “Teishoku” that is a Japanese set meal usually composed of rice, soup, main dish and pickles. I love the concept because you get everything at once, that can for sure take a little time to be prepared, but then you can eat things out of order. Picking your set can be a bit overwhelming as they have so many choices, but it is what makes this interesting and different each time you go as you can create multiple combinations, both vegetarian and non vegetarian. To ease the ordering, I usually take photos of my choices.

Here are some of the sets we had:

For Jodi, she always goes for the Vegetable Tonyu Nabe ($27), that comes with rice (she preferred the mini matcha curry rice over the multi grain rice), salad and miso soup. She also had their mini homemade tofu (+$4), that was very good (forget about supermarket tofu!).

On my side, the first set I tried was the Gindara Miso Set ($28), composed of grilled black cod in original blend miso and Japanese grated radish, mini matcha curry rice (+$3), a salad and miso soup.

Gindara miso set at Ootoya in Times Square

And the second set was amazing: Steak Ju regular for $39 (you can get a smaller portion for $27). It is a US Wagyu sirloin dressed with their steak sauce and scallions over rice. The meat was perfectly cooked, tender, juicy, with a nice char on the outside. A must have. With it, I added kake udon (+$5) that are hot udon noodles in dashi sauce (quite good, with a nice bite), and chawanmushi (+$3), a homemade egg custard that was delicate, soft and comforting. Another must have.

Drink wise, they of course have tea like sencha ($6) and sobacha ($6) or sparkling oolong tea soda flavored with lychee ($8), but also mocktails like the Genmaicha spritz ($7) that is made with brown rice green tea with matcha, lime and Sprite. Deliciously bright and refreshing.

Last is dessert. I love the fact that they propose a dessert box ($12) that is composed of a Japanese cheesecake, green tea ice cream and Warabimochi that are housemade mochi served with red beans and brown syrup sugar.

I love Ootoya: the food there is exquisite and quite different from what you usually get in a Japanese restaurant. I highly recommend this place.

Enjoy (I did)!

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Ootoya - 141 W 41st St, New York, NY 10036

Ootoya in Times Square

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