Japanese Food in a Basement?!- Sake Bar Hagi Review

I recently discovered the best Japanese food in Manhattan and just had to share with y'all. Surprisingly, it was located in Midtown West, which is usually a vast space of touristy overpriced mediocre food. Sake Bar Hagi was actually kind of hard to find as the sign wasn't too clear and its located next to two other similarly named Japanese restaurants. After much searching, we finally made it to food heaven. My friend and I decided to order several dishes tapas style so we would be able to try a bigger variety. BEST DECISION EVER. I'm giving 5 toasts on my rating scale because the food is such good quality, authentic, and decent portion size for its pricing.

We started off with the yakitori set. Personally, I don't like green peppers so I didn't try that (they didn't let us substitute it out either). The chicken meatballs were my favorite.

Then we moved on to the creamy (but spicy) mentai pasta with cod roe. This was by far my favorite dish and the next time I come here I would order this again in a heartbeat.

Next, the tasty and thick okinomiyaki! I loved this as well and thought it was one of the better made okinomiyakis I have had in New York. Mine had pork in it, but there is also an option to add seafood as well.

And then more spicy mentai cod roe, but this time with rice. The taste and spice level of this rice dish was similar to the pasta dish above, but the pasta dish definitely excelled at it better so I don't think I would order this again.

Last but not least, was our dessert! Our baked pastry fish was stuffed with red bean and came with matching red bean ice cream. The fish was baked so it was the right amount of hot and crunchy.

If you are ever in the NYC area, I strongly recommend this restaurant. Usually I'm hesitate to push for a specific restaurant to people because everyone has different desires and tastes when it comes to food. However, I feel like Sake Bar Hagi has a large enough menu that there is something yummy for everyone. Literally, their menu is a book. The best part, in my opinion, is that the portions are pretty good for its price. At some competing Japanese tapas restaurants, you will find yourself ordering similarly priced food items for a much smaller portion.

Do you guys like Japanese food? Which dish was your favorite?