tanoshi - upper east side

The majority of my visits to NYC keep me confined to the midtown / Times Square area. In fact, I’ve had some depressing business trips in which all of my dinner meals are prepared and delivered by hotel staff.  At times it’s unavoidable with the amount of work and people meeting necessary in a condensed amount of time. But it engenders  an unbreakable, unwanted habit. As the kids say, this falls within the range of a “first world problem”. But who cares – I live in the first world. And this is a problem. With Young MC’s arrival, my east coast trips have (fortunately) been less frequent. And those less frequent trips have become shorter as well. Gone are the trips in which I would bridge two weeks’ of meetings with a drunk fest weekend in Washington D.C. So, I should be making the most of these less frequent, shorter trips? Otherwise  I would find myself in a perpetual loop of the worst kind of business travel, the ones in which all of the minor perks you lean on to get you through the week are null and void. A couple of trips ago, I made my first visit to Brooklyn (really, after like 30ish previous travels to NYC). On my most recent jaunt, I made a solo dinner reservation at a place called Tanoshi – an unassuming omakase joint on the upper east side. I am getting adventurous! Tanoshi consistently popped up on high grade sushi establishments I researched in the city. The lone one I’ve previously been to was Sushi Yasuda near Grand Central. The omakase menu by itself is worth a trip. 10-12 pieces plus opportunity to order anything else on the menu a la carte. There are just a few seats in the diminutive, unassuming establishment – all things to help you get into a mode of focusing on nothing but stripped down fish. But when you add the ~$75 cost and bring-your-own-beer/wine/sake, it turns into an incredible deal. And you know that I’m the be-all-end-all authority on raw fish. Remember, I’m the dude who ate here. I will brag about that until I die. Seriously, if I’m talking sushi with anyone, a reference to that leads to wide-eyed bewilderment and awe. It instantaneously provides a legitimacy like few things in my material-driven life. “This guy is SERIOUS about his fish.” Anyway, finding top grade sushi joints on any of our travels is always a priority for me - whether its professional or personal travel. I might as well try to seek them out more frequently to the food mecca I visit more than any other. Thanks for stopping by.