Totto Restaurant

up_shiraz

Food as Entertainment 22nd October 2008

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Yakitori Totto shows that it is entirely possible to combine food and entertainment. This is a very exciting development in my life and may mean I don't end up watching TV or going to the theatre so much. This is a big 'may' though, as our wonderful dinner here only led us to seek dubious entertainment elsewhere later on (...yes you'll have to read on!).

First of all, it's a tiny room, upstairs, with a tiny sign outside. This fulfills a couple of NYC requirements i.e. you need to be in the know to find it, and it's hard to get a table when you get there. Once having negotiated these obstacles (thanks to our local Japanese host Tommy, of course) we sat down in a small private box set within the restaurant for countless small dishes all washed down by Kirin and a couple of superb Sakes. Every part of the chicken is used in this style of restaurant so there were thighs, oysters, livers and kebabs etc. All were on small skewers and cooked over coals in an open kitchen facing bar seating.

Other interesting dishes included succulent but strange beef tongue, sublime gyoza (think wagamama's x 1 million) and bunches of enoki mushrooms wrapped in bacon. There were rice dishes, lots of raw egg dips and all sorts of other stuff the sake has prevented me from remembering.

Authentic Japanese in Manhattan with beer and sake came to a very reasonable $50 per head. Oh and the sheer entertainment of it all comes free. Which brings me back to my previous admission. Surely you can guess by now that we headed a couple of doors down and booked ourselves into our own booth to scream down a microphone in time to dodgy Japanese videos of Tom Jones and Oasis etc. I wasn't very good at it. I guess I'll have to keep practising at this 'entertainment' thing.

bellaphon at 22/10/08

Surely you didn't attempt Wonderwall!

up_shiraz at 23/10/08

Sadly we did. It was the last song of a 3 hour marathon that finished at 4 in the morning. Surely we can't be held responsible for that...?

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