NYC’s Best Bread Service.
You'll find it at an undiscovered Japanese restaurant in Midtown
You’ve had good bread service before—warm and crusty slices of homemade three-day aged sourdough with hand-churned butter from cows bathed in milk and honey and bedded down on soft organic linen-lined stalls, or some such. You’ve been impressed. But there’s something else out there.
I discovered it the other night, at dinner in Midtown — which everyone has been saying is the “New Downtown” thanks to the likes of Monterey, Le Rock, Jupiter, Five Acres, Bad Roman, and Empellon, among others. In a cocoon of soft light, I was served bread that made me gasp out loud. Not a gasp of horror, a gasp of delight. This was a very good gasp.
The bread that made me gasp was served at an elegant Japanese restaurant called Taru that opened quietly in December and has been flying under the radar. The restaurant is under the care of Chef Tony Inn, quite a talented chap who has helmed the Michelin-starred kitchens of Masa, Morimoto New York, and Morimoto Waikiki and was a protégé of sushi master Toshio Suzuki.
The restaurant’s name, Taru, means barrel in Japanese; it’s often a vessel in which sake, shochu, and whiskey are stored and aged. It’s also a reference to the many ways Tony is reviving many seldom seen practices — he makes his own furikake and ferments his own miso in house, a process that takes more than three months. “I wanted this not to be just another Japanese restaurant,” he said. He’s succeeded.
Not sure why this place is not packed nightly, but for now you can get in without too much trouble, and that’s fine with me because I can go back for more of the bread I’m about to tell you about. (Not to mention the stunning sushi he’s doling out at his 10-seat omakase counter, and the exceptional Japanese fare in his luxurious 82-seat dining room.)
So about this bread. It’s not your average loaf; it’s a classic Japanese Shokupan (milk bread) baked daily by Pastry Chef Natsume Aoi who makes the dough from a mix of butter, flour, milk and eggs, and what seems like even more butter, and then proofs the dough twice so it’s like challah or brioche, but fluffier and with more dramatic personality. She bakes it until it’s roughly the color of brown butter, and slices it into thick puffy lightly toasted triangles. Then it gets brushed with warm wagyu tallow (fancy beef fat), just to gild the lily even more.
It’s served on a curved ceramic plate with a little saucer of homemade seaweed butter. If you like salted butter on your bread, you may have a moment of bliss when you try the seaweed butter on this milk loaf. It is salty, but also nutty, quite unexpected, and far more complex. It’s perhaps the Kendall Roy of butters.
The shokupan is also on the restaurant’s fantastic new bar menu in a more classic form: as part of a Katsu Sando—a fried pork cutlet sandwich. Yes, please.
Speaking of the bar, it’s a stunning oversized brass and glass oval surrounded by lots of butterscotch-colored midcentury modern leather lounge seating. It feels like a set from Mad Men and is an ideal spot to meet a friend for a cozy drink, or to gather a larger group.
The bar is doing a new menu launched just this week, pairing cocktails with snacks for a fun after-work treat. (Do people still go into the office? And do they wear pants with buttons and zippers? If so, fascinating.) The Signature includes a Taru Dreams of Matcha, a cocktail made from honkaku rice shochu, matcha, amazake, and egg white, paired with the milk bread.
The Rise and Rind combines Crispy Mimiga—thinly sliced fried pig ears marinated in garlic and soy, with the Seed Money, a Nikka gin cocktail shaken with watermelon, oolong, elderflower, and basil. The Limited Edition pairs a plate of fried hotaru ika (firefly squid) with a cocktail called the Golden Girl—a mix of Nikka gin, mandarin orange, maraschino and garnished with smoking rosemary.
You might also add a few orders of their seasonal gyoza (right now he’s doing shawarma gyoza!) and some of his cheese-stuffed Japanese sweet potato fritters that you’ll pop in your mouth over and over until they’ve vanished.
Now, to be sure, there is much more to enjoy on Chef Inn’s menu than bread and bar snacks. I loved the sushi (you can order sushi in the main dining room as well as at the omakase counter), the Crab Chawanmushi was exceptional, the steamed egg custard topped with a teeny tiny crispy fried crab teetering on top of the pudding like a cherry. I also loved the seared furikake-crusted duck breast with umeboshi pickled plums, sesame, and nori.
I must also add that Chef Aoi makes a Monkey Bread for dessert that has continued to appear in my dreams nightly. The pull-apart loaf is fluffy, toasted and warm, and drizzled with miso caramel and studded with caramelized bananas. I had to take one home for my kids, which I helped them eat for breakfast the next morning. Such a good mom.
Taru is located at 30 West 53rd St. (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues) NYC, (917) 456-1171. Reservations. Hours: Main dining room, 5:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m.; Kotaru, seatings at 6:00 p.m. & 8:30 p.m.