I’d always been curious about Moonrise Izakaya on Amsterdam Avenue, covered in busy, vibrant graffiti art by Shiro One. An izakaya is a Japanese gastropub, serving varieties of sake and small plates ranging from comforting to wildly inventive.  Moonrise Izakaya opened in October 2019, only enjoying four months in the moonshine before it closed for the pandemic. We and stalwart dining partners Kathleen and Stefan reserved a comfortable outdoor table with powerful heat lamps. I was immediately impressed with the über-friendly waitstaff who gave us free sake shots to start, a Moonrise tradition!

The menu matches the playful irreverent graffiti in that there’s always a fun, but surprisingly good mashup of Japanese and American or even Italian foods. The night we went they were serving Italian parm bao buns and during Chanukkah they had latke bao buns. This March the bao buns have an Irish cast: corned beef, colcannon (spuds), with whiskey mustard sauce. The chef and I tamely ordered traditional bao that come two to an order in a bamboo steamer ($9). Fluffy white buns are stuffed with either chicken, pork belly or mushroom along with shiso (a Japanese herb in the mint family), radish, pickle and the magic combo of spicy mayo and eel sauce.

But the real standouts were our potato croquettes ($9). I know “potato croquettes” sound like something out of a 1960s TV dinner or what passes for haute cuisine in a high school cafeteria. But these melt-in-your mouth fluffy potato clouds were held together by the most delicate crust and spritzed with spicy (Kewpie) mayo and the eel sauce that is almost the whole point of ordering eel sushi. If I come back, I’ll also get the kaarage ($9) Stefan and Kathleen ordered. Marinated and fried chunks of chicken served with…yes, homemade spicy mayo. I had a tidbit, which reminded me of really perfect Korean fried chicken, the dry crisp layer outside and tender chicken inside. The Chef reminds me that SOMEBODY said:

 “99% of cooking is turning something into being crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.”

WHO SAID THIS AND WHAT WERE THE EXACT WORDS? I WILL GIVE YOU A $30 GC FOR STARTERS AT MOONRISE IZAKAYA IF YOU CAN GET ME THE EXACT WORDING OF QUOTE WITH AUTHOR AND PROOF! THE CHEF THINKS AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER OR MARIE-ANTOINE CAREME…

Fun with Cheung Fun at Wu’s Wonton King

It was the confluence of Valentines’s Day and Lunar New Year so the Chef and I thought an outdoor dining experience in Chinatown was just the thing. Restaurants had just opened inside, though, and Chinatown is not as well set up for outdoor dining as the UWS and other locales in Manhattan. Nevertheless, we finally found a rickety wooden structure outside Wu’s Wonton King. To start, the Chef ordered Congee with pork and preserved egg ($5.49). We both loved the comforting texture and noticed that new tidbits kept surfacing the more we dipped our spoons in—a small green striped preserved egg chunk, a piece of toast, pork slivers, scallions, mushroom. I had to order wontons at the wonton king, so my shrimp and pork wonton soup was filled with giant shrimp/pork wontons, with fried skins that seemed shirred. These warming starters, the congee in particular, were perfect for eating al fresco in brisk weather.

Then we got to eat something that everyone else seems to have had for years and I, snack eater extraordinaire, had never tried: Cantonese rice rolls or cheung fung. I have always loved the fat, glutinous texture of the wide rice noodles in Thai pad se ew. Think of a sheet made out of an even thicker bright white rice noodle, rolled around mushrooms and scallions, around pork or gingery shrimp, sliced into segments. It’s a dim sum standard, and we had two at Wu’s Wonton King (find them on the lunch menu), a scallion rice roll and a honey roast pork rice roll ($3.49 each). Each was quite filling, but we had no trouble eating every last bite, all doused with soy sauce and hot sauce.

No sooner had I satisfied my craving for rice rolls than I learned our balaboosta daughter Julie had made her cheung fun from scratch (pictures above). Ordinarily they need steaming, but she was intrepid and found a recipe that required she mix the thin batter of rice flour, tapioca starch, corn starch, sugar and water in the bottom of a pyrex dish, put shrink wrap over it and microwave it. I’m sure it was a delicate process getting the roll to stay together. She filled hers with shitaki mushrooms and scallion and topped it with her own homemade chili oil made with her own homemade Chinese five-spice mixture! We are getting a dinner invitation soon!

Final note: I hope you’ll join in protesting against the rise in hate crimes directed against the Asian-American community. Also, please join with me in supporting Chinatown. Huge Ma, the creator of the super simple NYC area vaccine site TurboVax asks all those who use his free site to donate to Welcome to Chinatown, an organization that supports the Chinatown business community, much of which has been decimated by our plague year, and which has also been affected by the waves of anti-Asian xenophobia and hate crimes. Whether you use the vaccination site or not, I hope you’ll donate!

Moonrise Izakaya
774 Amsterdam Avenue
646-541-2506

Wu’s Wonton King
165 E. Broadway (near Seward Park)
212-477-1111