Masa

There aren’t many people you can tell that you spent $750 per person on one dinner out that would understand. I mean everyone’s first question is was it worth it. For me, there are two ways to answer this question. Without a doubt the most obvious answer is no. It’s virtually impossible for one meal to be worth $750 per person because no one can eat enough comfortably for it to be “worth” that much. But, the answer I save for those that would get it is absolutely it was worth it to me. I loved Masa from the second I walked in the door and I still think of how much I enjoy that night now and I am positive I will for many years. See, dinner at Masa isn’t just dinner. It’s a dinner that includes a show by your own personal chef. There was certainly a bit of awkwardness in the waitress service. It was that service that you always feel the presence of, which is likely attributable to the fact that the night we were there the restaurant was relatively empty. I mean the seemingly huge space only has 26 seats.

The restaurant is located in the Time Warner Center and the entrance is down a hallway through a curtain. The door is a gorgeous gnarled natural plank of tree that doesn’t fully fill the door frame. When you enter, the sushi bar is ahead on the right and there are some tables in small rooms off the main room. But don’t even bother with the tables. If you’re going to shell out the money for Masa, you HAVE to sit at the sushi bar. The sushi bar is a wide piece of hinoki wood from japan that apparently cost $60,000. It’s a gorgeous light brown wood that was chosen because it is highly rot resistant.

The menu is omakase and Chef Masa Takayama aims to serve seasonal ingredients. In addition to the menu offered the night we were there, they offered an additional dish for an extra supplement. We sat at one end of the sushi bar, behind which work three sushi chefs preparing the night’s dishes. The night we were there Chef Masa was preparing in center stage and serving the group next to us.

We ordered a bottle of Masa’s own private label sake, which was so smooth and amazing. It complemented each and every one of our dishes and I will likely compare all future sakes I drink to it. I loved the way they served the sake as well. The sake is decanted into a hand crafted carafe that is presented in a large bowl of ice then and poured into bamboo cups that were all designed by Masa, who is apparently an avid potter. I suppose here is where I say I loved Chef Masa. He came over after our meal and shook both of our hands and said he hoped we enjoyed everything. Just watching him behind the sushi bar was such a joy.

I will never get tired of the warm hand towels that you receive at the start of your meal at a Japanese restaurant. After our hand towels, our first dish arrived. It was a refreshing Japanese crab salad in a light citrus dressing. A really nice welcome to the meal. The next plate was toro tartare with caviar and these delicious toast points that they grilled to order on the small grill behind the left side of the sushi bar. The toro tartare tasted so fresh like it was just this second brought in and prepared and I always love the briny addition of caviar to a plate.

In my research prior to dining at Masa, I had read that many nights Chef Masa serves pufferfish, aka Fugu. Fugu contains poisons in its organs and is deadly if cleaned improperly. The regulations around serving blowfish are very strict, as you can imagine. There is only one source in Japan that US regulators allow restaurants here to use and the factory there has been preparing blowfish for years. Being at Masa, I didn’t feel any hesitation in having it. Since so many people put their lives on the line to consume fugu in other parts of the world, I was expecting it to be the most buttery, melt in your mouth delicious sashimi I’ve ever had. It wasn’t. The texture wasn’t anywhere close to what I anticipated. It was actually far chewier in texture than your average sushi. The first dish of blowfish we had was fugu sashimi salad with a spicy vinaigrette. The vinaigrette was delicious and the fugu grew on me after the second bite. But what sold me on fugu being worth it was the next dish, a fried fugu “wing”. This was perfectly battered and fried and the meat so tender. Susan and I both loved it and decided we wanted these instead of all our future chicken wings.

The fifth course was grilled langoustine with the head on. They kindly had split the shells so the meat was easy to get at. The flavor of the langoustine was wonderful and the meat incredibly tender. This was a great, simple dish.

At this point, one of the waitresses came over and explained that there was a supplemental dish of wagyu beef, seaweed salt, and shaved white truffles for an additional $150. We figured go big or go home, so we ordered just one to split. The chef put the wagyu on a searing hot grill for just a second and then served it with the salt and a hefty hand of freshly shaved white truffles. This was one of my favorite dishes of the night. The beef was just crazy tender and rich and the white truffles gave it an even meatier flavor.

The next dish was yellowfin tuna sashimi with a hot broth and a dipping sauce. The chef explained that you dip it in the hot broth for just a few seconds to lightly cook it and then in the soy sauce to flavor it. After the tuna was done, the waitresses took the broth away, strained it into a new bowl, and served the remaining broth to us. This was the perfect course to transition into the sushi portion of the meal.

Our waitresses brought another warm cloth and then for our sushi course ginger, soy sauce, a black platter, and a dipping bowl for our fingers. Our own personal sushi chef then began to prepare and serve us individual pieces of sushi. The sushi course lasted about an hour and included Bluefin tuna, white tuna, Japanese butter fish, grilled scallop, two temaki (cones) one of uni and the other toro, two vegetable rolls one of mushroom and the other lotus leaf with ume shiso (plum paste and shiso leaf), an entire roll of shaved white truffle, two eel rolls the better of which was grilled with miso, grilled bluefin collar that was amazing, clam, shrimp, two different squid rolls the better of which was with yuzu, fluke with daikon radish, and mackerel. Besides the uni, because I’m just not an uni fan, every piece of sushi was outrageously delicious. Definitely some of the best sushi either Sue or I have ever had. I love omakase. Having all your sushi just handed to you by your own personal chef is definitely something that plays a part in my version of heaven. We overheard the person next to us asking the chef the amount of time between the fish being caught and it being served. Chef replied about 14 hours. From the freshness in each bite, I’ve no doubt that’s true.

For dessert, they served a persimmon that I certainly could have done without.

Overall, the evening was one of those that just felt special and to me that made it worth it. So much so that I think Sue and I may go again next year!