(3 out of 5 hot dogs)

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Azuki Sushi
239 Park (19^th and 20^th)
Time: All the time
Price: Spend $20 on sushi, mystery wine and sake involved

Azuki is your average sushi restaurant, nestled in between the much better Sushi Samba and Haru.  To step up the competition, they added alcohol to the equation.  Apparently they used to have unlimited house white wine and sake with every meal, but now they’ve cracked down on the rules, and it’s much more confusing than that.  It’s something like, if you spend $15, you get a serving of sake but no wine, or if you spend $20 you get wine, but only two glasses, or sake, but only one, but maybe they’ll give you two, but maybe not, or if you ask for another glass of wine they might charge you, but if you complain they might take it off the bill, but maybe not, and really who knows…drunken sushi is too true and pure an ideal to be tarnished with all these rules and regulations!  In the future I’m sticking with the shitshow-wonderland-drunken-sushi-palace that is New Ashiya.

(3 out of 5 hot dogs)

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Sushi Lounge
132 St Marks (at A)
Time: Forever and ever
Price: 50% off sushi

At Sushi Lounge they have 50% off sushi all the time. Not just happy hour, and not just at lunch, but ALL THE TIME.  That means, their menu prices are just double the actual price that they charge.  Hmmm.  That’s about as logical as ordering a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  Hold the peanut butter.  And Jelly.  And Bread.  Or advertising free air.  To be fair though, their prices are really cheap.  Half off a $4 tuna roll is $2, and half off an $8.25 shrimp tempura roll is $4.12½  (you can pay the half-cent in yen.)  But I guess saying 50% off is a better marketing technique than saying DIRT CHEAP sushi.  So ridiculously cheap that you should be concerned.  With all these thoughts running through my head, I avoided the half-off-fish, and went with a vegetarian lunch special to-go ($7.95 available until 4pm), that included veggie tempura, rice, some gross seaweed stuff, a cucumber-avocado roll, miso soup and a salad served in coffee cups.  It was a gorgeous day outside, and I ate my lunch in Tompkins Square Park with the cracked-out bums, drank miso out of a cup, and contemplated what 50% of 50% of 50% of 50% was.

(3 out of 5 hot dogs)

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Bamboo
1280 1^st Ave (68^th and 69^th)
Time: Everyday 11-4
Price: California roll, miso soup, green salad, rice, fried shumai and one protein, $8.25

I was walking home, and had a flash-craving for Japanese food, so I popped into Bamboo, the nearest sushi bar, and picked up a Bento Box to go.  I’m a fan of bento boxes, because they come with so much different stuff in them that you can never get bored.  CELEB ALERET! CELEB ALERT!  After exiting the restaurant, who should I pass on the street but the Fabric Heiress herself, Ally Zarin of Real Housewives of NYC fame.  It didn’t appear that she was going to Bamboo, but I couldn’t tell.  Maybe Jill and Bobby put her on a budget, and she is forced to live on meager lunch specials before being shipped off to Martha’s Vineyard to “detox.”  Anyway, I got tofu teriyaki, and it came with all that stuff pictured to the left.  It tasted good and I felt great, but it may have just been the post-celeb-sighting-afterglow.

(5 out of 5 hot dogs)

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New Ashiya
167 1st Ave (at 10th Street)
Time: All the time
Price: $30 unlimited sushi, sake and beer

I have found El Dorado. You may have heard legends of the all-you-can-eat-and-drink-sushi fountain of youth, and here it is: your treasure map on ITJS. For real. Boundless spicy tuna, shrimp tempura and dragon rolls flowing forth in golden streams of cold beer and hot sake springs. With an extensive sushi menu and the fixings for limitless sake-bombs, this is truly an oasis in a desert of over-priced/non-satisfying sushi venues populating the city. You have two hours, which is plenty of time to consume at least $200 of food and drinks. Expect at least three overzealous diners to vomit during your stay, so pace yourself! You might feel horrible after coming here; you might want to take a fork and dig out your own intestines, but in the best way possible, I assure you.

(2 out of 5 hot dogs)

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Kiku/ Kikku
50 W 55th St (Between 5th and 6th Ave)
Time: Weekday 11:00 AM- 3:30 PM
Price: Two rolls with soup and salad, $8.50
Lunch Box Special, $11.50

The most off-putting part of this lunch special is that the name of the restaurant is spelled differently on the menu and on the awning. Which is it, Kiku or Kikku?? If they can’t tell the difference between spellings, can they tell the difference between fresh salmon and three week old salmon? If I paid with a single, would they think it’s a ten and give me change? This sushi restaurant is bizarrely located on the second floor of what appears to be an apartment building, so you have to uncomfortably walk in the door and go up a common stairwell to get there. I almost turned around when I got to the top of the stairs, and saw hoards of Asian children running about. But for the sake (if not saké) of this blog, I decided to tough it out. The fish at the sushi counter looked almost fresh, and it ended up being eatable (it was no “Ogawa”.) The house salad was extra-white ice burg lettuce with a paper thin, half slice of tomato on top. I decided to get my meal take out and eat in the park, which is a few blocks away, which was pleasant. But I won’t be returning any time soon, or at least until they get their spelling straight.

(1 out of 5 hot dogs)

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Ogawa Café
36 E 4th St. (Between Bowery and Lafayette)
Time: Everyday, 11:30 am- 3:30 pm
Price: Two sushi rolls, $7.25
Three sushi rolls, $9.75
Lunch Box Special, $8.60

My first time, (Yes, I went more then once) I had intended for the usual sushi lunch special. However, the description and the sheer magnitude of the ‘lunch box special” was so impressive, that I had no other choice to order it. It comes with a soup, salad, rice, 3 fried shumai, four pieces of California roll and an entrée of your choice. What they don’t tell you is that is inedible in every possible way. And when I say inedible, I mean that I actually could not eat it. For my entrée, I decided to be gutsy, and go with the Tofu Teriyaki. What they served was a moist lukewarm chunk of tofu covering in this layer of gummy “teriyaki.” I would not call myself fluent with chopsticks, but I am at least conversational. And I kept attempting to pick up parts of the tofu, and it would fall and slip from my grasp. Even when I switched to the fork, I was unable to get it on the fork and into my mouth. I finally used my hands, and I shouldn’t have even bothered, it was so heinous. The other components were equally below average and unappetizing. A month later, I was in the neighborhood, and decided to give Ogawa a second chance, and this time just stick with the sushi lunch. Three sushi rolls for $9.75. I ordered salmon avocado, philly and yellowtail rolls. The salmon and avocado was warm and mushy. The philly roll was dominated by dollar-store cream cheese that had been sitting in the freezer for years. The yellowtail was too fishy, and I imagined myself slowly getting food poisoning as I ate the meal, and dreaded becoming a human party favor (stuff coming out of both ends). The cherry on the top of the afternoon, actually both times, I got the bill, the sales tax seemed to be over three times what it should be, and the server conveniently didn’t speak English when I asked them about it. Fortunately, I did not spend that evening on the toilet, but I would never go back for a strike three, or recommend that you do so, unless it’s an April Fool’s prank or you need the ideal location to break up with your girlfriend.

(3 out of 5 hot dogs)

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Lili’s Noodle House
1500 3rd Ave (84th and 85th)
Time: Weekday 11:30 AM- 4:00 PM
Price: Two Sushi Rolls with soup or salad, $8.50
Various Noodle/ Rice bowls with soup or salad, $7.95

Lili’s Noodle House is a place near and dear to me, my very first NYC lunch special experience. One might say that I lost my lunch special virginity here. As my spectrum has broadened and I have become worldlier in my lunch special knowledge, I have become disenchanted with Lili’s. However, they do offer pretty good food at pretty good price. The lunch special comes with either a soup or salad. The miso and wonton soups are great. I tried the egg-drop soup and thought it was pretty awful, tastes like sweetened, water-down scrambled eggs. But apparently, that is what egg-drop soup is supposed to taste like… (Confused why anyone would eat that) The sushi is legit. My favorite is the eel avocado, which has a really nice sauce.