Kasadela - a mini place with big eats
I had the pleasure of dining this past Friday night at Kasadela - a tiny Japanese “tapas” joint on East 11th Street and Ave. C. Big ups to my amigo Donny for recommending this place.
I got here at 9pm. The place was half full. By 9:30pm it was full full. The whole space is probably just 10 or so tables. It’s small and the food portions are small but the taste is far from small.
We started with the house’s own special black edamame, nori, pork belly with kimchee, broiled smelt with roe and a carafe of silky sake. The edamame was different from your standard sushi-joint soy bean. They were crispier. Less soft. More firm. T’was a subtle difference.
The nori - OMG THE NORI - was holy crap good. I didn’t know a slab of seaweed, crispy and salty, can taste THIS GOOD. Needless to say, after the first bowl of nori was devoured, a second was promptly ordered to accompany the pork belly and smelts. Normally, I’m a huge fan of unorthodox seafood. The stranger the better in my opinion. But the smelts just had absolutely nothing going for them. It was as if I ate a broiled twig (minus the berries). No taste. No structure. Just chewy. We didn’t even finish this dish.
The pork belly, on the other hand, was romantic and quite pleasurable. Pork belly + ________ (fill in the blank) = delicious. It’s a simple math formula. Here, the chef filled in the blank with kimchee. It was a royal pairing.
This obviously wasn’t enough food as the dishes are quite small so we followed this up with fried chicken skins on a skewer, beef tataki with ponzu and for dessert - red bean and green tea mochi. The beef tataki was pure abrosia. It was served over a bed of pickled daikon, pickled onion and cucumber. I was in heaven and ladeled the rest of the saturated ponzu sauce with my soup spoon. That’s how I roll. The fried chicken skins were good but reminded me of my youth. Russians love shit like this. I can’t see too many of my American friends enjoying this. And the mochi is like pizza. Even if it’s not that good, it’s still yummy. And it was very good.
This whole meal plus sake cost $77!!!! I was happy. The place only takes cash so be advised to hit the ATM before you dine here. I really, really, really liked this restaurant and I will definitely be back to try more of the adventurous fare on the menu.
