DARUMA-YA

The lunch set is a good deal, I chose the Grilled Mackerel Lunch Set and it come with miso soup, shrimp and vegetable tempura, tofu, a vegetable side, a choice of sushi roll. I like that there’s no rice in the set because it’s plenty of food. Although I would like to have more vegetables.

This restaurant is by far one of the best in the city. NYC has a large variety of some really great dining experiences but Daruma Ya is incredibly delightful. Ive gone twice and each time I have had a great experience. The Chef does a great job coming up with the menu and pairing tastes, it is at the top of my list.
Must try.

For background, I’ve eaten at high end sushi and izakaya places in San Francisco, Tokyo and many other cities (including others with Michelin stars). And my meal at Daruma-​ya was so perfect that i wish i lived closer so i could return more often! I will definitely go back next time I’m in NYC. The menu is huge so my biggest complaint (which really isn’t one) was that ordering involved some very tough choices. So sharing will help expand the range of things you can taste. We had a mix of grilled items, soba, and sushi. All with a great wine list. While not cheap, this place was totally worth it if you’re looking for something to splurge on in a calm, quiet setting with a vast and delicious menu.

Came here for lunch with a friend and had really good food. I really recommend the chicken wings, the flash-​fried chicken wings was so so so crispy and the sauce was to-​die-​for. Friend said it was the best chicken wings she’s ever had. The soba set came with cold soba, which we split, homemade tofu, which was super soft – definitely recommend this one, and standard miso soup. I also recommend the grilled lobster tail with uni miso mayo. I’m usually don’t go crazy for lobster but this one was worth it and super easy to eat – already opened for you! The place wasn’t as nice as I expected it to be, given that it is a traditional izakaya and it doesn’t compare to places like Ootoya or Robataya, but would recommend it if you’re in the Tribeca area.

Walked in with no reservations and was immediately seated. Went for the Omotenashi Course which includes 3 small appetizers, 3 kinds of sashimi, 5 sushi pieces of chef’s selection, and hot seiro soba. It was a comprehensive set, but uninteresting to those who are adventurous or already well-​versed in Japanese cuisine. The Uni Flight features Hokkaido Japan and Santa Barbara — set up as a DIY-​rolling station with nori. I recommend sharing 1 flight between 2 people, and all the cocktails have my seal of approval.
All the sushi is apparently prepared from Sushi Azuba downstairs, so for those who are unable to score reservations — Daruma-​Ya serves as a great alternative if you don’t mind sacrificing the sushi bar experience.
Had no issues with service or timeliness as mentioned in other reviews. In fact, our server was charming, hilarious, and attentive.

3.5. This is the restaurant actually upstair of the sushi Azuba. The environment is comfortable and like the little lamp on the dining table. They really need better service, ordered 2 piece of O-​toro sushi and they don’t even bring it to me. Order the Uni flight, the Uni tasting dish. Have different Uni from Japan and Santa Barbara, it is quite overpriced for me, 40 dollar just for 2 kind of Uni. And it’s not even that much. Also got the lobster with Uni, Uni ikura tofu, Wagyu beef roll with shaved truffle, eel with crispy soba chips, and king crab leg with crab butter. And tried the hot soba and Uni soba for main. Mochi for the dessert.
The Uni flight is ridiculously overpriced. Can’t believe they charge you 40 for those little sea urchins. And the Uni from Santa Barbara taste really weird. It’s not fresh enough, the Uni from Japan is not sweet enough.
The Uni ikura tofu was alright, just sea urchin and salmon roe and tofu. Quite underwhelming but taste good.
The lobster with Uni is way too salty. I have to drink a lot of water to release my tongue after I eat that. The Uni became the sauce of lobster. So don’t order if you are expecting to taste the texture of Uni from this dish.
The eel with crispy soba chips is delicious. The eel just melt in your mouth with the avocado and jalapeño pepper. Highly recommend.
King crab leg with crab butter is my favorite dish. The crab butter it’s delicious and the crab meat is tender and juicy. A must try dish.
The soba is alright… The Uni soba is just Uni with some cold soba. No surprise.
And the Wagyu beef roll with shaved truffle is delicious but I just wish they can pick better truffle. The truffle taste bad.
And the service can be faster.

Quiet and cozy, my favorite go to Japanese place. The prices are affordable and the quality of the food is spectacular. A hidden gem in NYC

Love this little authentic Japanese place.
Greenwich Street is divided in that near the south part when it is first formed, it teems with restaurants. North of 388 Greenwich, restaurants are scarce, and this is one of the hidden gems.
Your best bet is to come during lunchtime, when lunch specials and an environment that represents the best mix of casual /​romantic /​professional literally rock your world. While I’ve never before tried the soba sets, the lunch sets are amazing. They’re filling too — comes with tofu, a few sides, and tempura. Whether it’s tender fried chicken or beef curry, the options are wholesome and delicious.
Dinner gets crazily expensive and portions are small, so it’s not as good of a deal. With that said, sometimes we pool our budgets during seamless office dinners to get a bit more of Darumaya’s deliciousness.

3.5 stars for a sexy, low-​key spot serving fine Japanese food. A bit pricey, but just as you’d expect from any fine dining restaurant. Portions are small so you may have to order several dishes to be full.
Came here for dinner and I ordered the Ikura Bowl and a side of Washu Beef Sukiyaki. The Ikura Bowl was extremely fresh and tasty, with hints of ume in the rice blending seamlessly together with the freshness and juiciness of Ikura. The quality of the beef in the sukiyaki was good, but otherwise nothing much else stood out.
My friends ordered the Omotenashi dinner set, consisting of 5 courses at $ 80 per set. You can tell the quality of the food is top notch and meticulously prepared, but it took way too long in between courses for the food to come out, resulting in a 3-​hour long meal. –1 star for slow service.
Our waiter, although very nice and friendly, seemed a little clueless about the dishes and was also not very attentive to us (not refilling our water glasses, not noticing us when we need something, etc.). –0.5 stars.
I will be back to try their lunch sets, as I’ve heard good things about them and now know that their food quality can be trusted. But, I will not be back for dinner since it is way too expensive and service is too slow for my liking.

This is one of the best sushi places I have ever gone to. The fish is very fresh, the service is amazing and the drinks are great. The cooked food is good as well.
I came here twice, both times for dinner. We ordered a bunch of small plates and created a tasting menu for ourselves.
The uni flight is so delicious, they give you uni from two different places, one from Japan and other is a domestic one.

Sort of mixed bag — the food is incredibly fresh. Fantastic sashimi. But there really wasn’t any mind-​blowing flavorful dish. The pickled vegetables were delicious, but not the typical flavor one expects when going to a Japanese restaurant. The Hudson valley duck soba was lovely — albeit deceptively filling.
A number of the dishes are prepared in a way that makes it difficult to eat. On top of that, the service was not particularly praiseworthy either, as the only comment on the difficult-​to-​handle dishes was «eat it however you like».
The décor and ambiance is lovely, simple but very zen — and virtually no one was in the restaurant, which is a nice change of pace.
The whiskey selection was average — there was relatively limited choice within the Japanese family, all of which were lower-​tier top shelf.
All-​in-​all, it’s a good restaurant — not great — and leaves much desired.

Daruma-​Ya is a newly opened restaurant and we decided to visit at the last moment after seeing it advertised on
. High points for delicious food, minor improvements could be made in plating and servers.
I was surprised to see how large the restaurant was. At first it only looks like a bar area with 5 or 6 tables, but there’s actually a larger dining area in the back which is where they seated us.
They recommend 3 — 5 plates to share and then 1 soba each. To be honest, we would have been full with 3 plates and 1 soba for 2, I’ll explain.
We started with the homemade silken tofu with sea urchin and salmon roe. The plate itself was delicious, but the plating left something to be desired — just looked like a lump of tofu with the roe and uni dumped on top. However, taste was fresh
We then got the chicken rice dish, which looks more like rice cooked in chicken broth then with chicken sprinkled in, not quite chicken on top of rice. It was simple and delicious as well, but again, plating could leave something to be desired .
Our third dish was the grilled black cod with Kyoto style miso (gindara saikyo yaki). Can I say, orgasm in my mouth? Buttery, sweet, perfectly cooked, every bite was a little bit of heaven, and priced at $ 22, it’s not bad for the amount of fish you get. This was my favorite of the night.
We got a traditional cold soba (seiro soba) and a hot soba in vegetable broth. Soba tasted good, not GREAT (well, we’ve had better in Japan, but that’s as useful as saying that we’ve had better tacos in Mexico…) but it was up to par for what we paid for. I did prefer the cold soba more. At the end of the meal the server pours the remaining water the soba was cooked in, into your cup with soy sauce, which you can enjoy.
Our server was a little… too much? I mean, he was great! However, I think they have to find a balance between talking a lot and simply providing good service. i definitely felt that we had really great service, but I found the servers a bit too talkative. Every time they come to switch dishes they say something, and there is a lot of busing of dishes, and my husband and I just wanted a quiet romantic dinner. Sometimes the benefits of the dish are way too emphasized (like how the pasta water is supposed to help bring back some nutrients or whatever.), whereas I feel like this restaurant is all about simplicity, authenticity and taste, and that’s really what should be highlighted.
All in all, a great experience.

I’ll be back and I’m bringing my friends.
If you’re looking to try authentic Japanese food — come here.
1. Service was impeccable. Water glasses filled to the brim and our server was really kind and explained everything to us with her honest opinion instead of trying to upsell!
2. There wasn’t a speck left on my lunch set — beef and pork. Truly one of the best Japanese meals I’ve had. The pork and beef were in patties served with a wasabi barbeque dip — AMAZING. My friend is addicted and is planning on coming back soon!
3. Usually Japanese food leaves me hungry after 2 hrs but I was full for a sold 6 before dinner.
I’ll be back soon. I’m bringing all my friends here. This place is simply amazing.

While service is always slow here whether it is this restaurant or the old Greenwich Grill, the food remains pretty good. I had scallops crudo which was good but probably should have been a little colder. The fried chicken was decent. My pickled plum and shiso leaf roll came with the uni soba. Both were delicious. Shiso leaf is so underrated. The soba broth was very good and I loved the thin soba noodles that were al dente. Uni quality was pretty good (not Soto level).

This used to be where the old Greenwich Grill used to be. But now it’s a fancy soba place. The space has not changed. The curved bar in the front is still just as gorgeous and sexy as it was the last time I came here and the space is still just as intimate and quiet.
It was a bit strange because on one hand, you’re there for soba, so you kind of expect a more relaxed and casual environment. On the other hand, they also serve fancy things like grilled lobster with sea urchin mayo, and homemade silken tofu with with sea urchin and salmon roe, bluefin tuna with pine nuts and a raw quail egg on top, (all of which we ordered… and were amazing… umm, yeah.), so I get why they decided to keep the décor the way it was.
It’s just funny juxtaposition because you go downstairs to Sushi Azabu, and it’s more casual than it is upstairs.
Yes, we ordered the soba to finish up the meal. My friend ordered the special I think, which was a cold soba with roe on top and dipping sauce on the side. I had the kamo seiro soba, which was served with a hot duck broth. Both were equally delicious, although I think in this case, because of the broth, the duck soba was a little bit better.
For dessert, I recommend skipping the molten lava cake, instead order the shaved ice with red bean and green tea. It’s delicious and just the right amount of sweetness to balance out all that savory food.
I liked Daruma-​Ya. I think the décor and the menu is a bit of a contradiction, but if I just isolate it to good food, and a nice, quiet place to have dinner with a friend and have a conversation, then it’s a 4 in my book.

True Japanese traditional dishes.
If you love uni this is the place for you.
The best deal is the Omakase.
His homemade soba is cooked all dente. The one I ordered has uni.
They serve it with fresh wasabi.
It’s as authentic as you can get.

Daruma-​ya is a new, upscale izakaya where for the first time, I feel like I had interesting and surprising things to eat for almost every course that we ordered. It’s not a place I would ever go to without a little somethin’ somethin’ — in this case, I had a BlackboardEats promotion granting me a 300ml of sake and an order of chicken kara-​age. But, having been there, I can definitely think of situations where I might return. It’s kind of like, «where do you take the izakaya fan who has seen it all?» It might very well be here.
The dishes here are really innovative:
— Fried scallop: breaded in crumbled senbei (rice crackers) was a bit greasy, and the batter didn’t stick to the scallop, but really creative and cool idea.
— Lobster uni miso mayo: Exactly what it sounds like, and amazing. Could have used a little bed of rice to pick up all the delicious, uni-​flavored sauce at the bottom of the shell. This was the runaway hit for me.
— Takowasa: unlike other takowasas i’ve paid as much for ($ 9), this is freshly prepared and reminds me more of a ceviche than something that’s been sitting in the fridge for 2 weeks. Instead of a sludge texture you can distinguish each piece of octopus before you pick it up. It’s an extremely small amount in the serving but every bite is flavorful, and it is paired with red shiso that I wish there were a little more of.
— Kara-​age: Your typical high-​quality kara-​age. Save a couple bucks having it at B-​Flat. Though it is the cheapest cooked item on their menu.
— Kitsune soba: We got this to fill up. The soba noodles are definitely very fresh, and perhaps because they were so fresh, they were fragile to a fault, easily breaking between the tapered chopsticks we were given. I personally like a little more toothiness to my soba, and honestly, for the money, I’d order the ‘dipping soba’ at my favorite Cocoron every time. The kitsune (tofu skin) was very tasty, but I’ve never had a lousy tofu skin even at stand-​up noodle stalls in Japanese train stations.
I have two complaints about this place, pretty minor ones. First, the music is horrible. I felt like I was in an elevator or the waiting room at a doctor’s office. Upscale Japanese places for Japanese people tend to play jazz. Which I love, so I would love if they did that!
And perhaps it was the music, or the way the service was performed, or the French GM, I felt like I had to be on my best behavior. I had my ‘fine dining’ face on. Usually when you find me at izakayas, I’m shouting and laughing with my friends and clinking my beer. I am totally relaxed. But because I felt compelled to have my game-​face on here, I could not totally relax.
And isn’t that what an izakaya is for?

As a fan of Japanese small plates style restaurants, I was super intrigued after hearing about the recent opening of Daruma-​Ya, which is now housed where Greenwich Grill used to be. Reservations were fairly easy to get on a Friday night, so I ended up coming at 8pm with three friends for dinner.
The interior of the restaurant is modern yet simple, and best suited for small groups or dates. Daruma-​Ya markets itself as a «soba house and izakaya,» so most of the dishes on the menu are meant to be shared. The exception is the soba, which our server described as the entrée. My friends and I decided to get a few small dishes and then each get our own soba.
We ordered:
— Tori karaage — Came with about six pieces of chicken plus a side of miso mayonnaise. The chicken was really juicy and overall delicious!
— Agedashi tofu– Three pieces of deep-​fried tofu in soba broth with nameko mushrooms. The tofu was just ok, and the mushrooms were really hard to pick up with chopsticks.
— Salmon tartare — Came with a quail egg, which we mixed into the tartare. It was served with chips on the side to eat it with, but there were only about eight chips so we had a bit of tartare left at the end. The salmon was pretty good, and had a slight wasabi flavor.
— Dashimaki tamago — Japanese omelette, six pieces served. Decent, but nothing special.
— Cold seiro soba — We’re soba noobs so we had to ask the server for instructions on how to eat it (he told us to pour the dipping sauce into the empty cup, then put the soba in and add wasabi and scallions to our liking). Afterwards he gave us a teapot full of soba broth that we could mix into our leftover sauce and drink. The broth and soba were both good, but there weren’t a whole lot of noodles so it wasn’t very filling.
The dessert menu looked interesting too, so we decided to each get one. I chose the shiso granite, which was like a syrupy shaved ice mixed with tiny bits of shiso. I also tried a bit of my friend’s daifuku, which came with four pieces total (two chestnut, two strawberry) and was pretty delicious.
Service, on the other hand, was incredibly SLOW. It took forever to take our orders, and our water wasn’t refilled until we asked. The food itself didn’t take a long time to come out, but everything else was just really slow. Dinner took about two and a half hours total. Our server was actually a really upbeat and friendly guy so I feel bad slamming the service, but it’s one aspect Daruma-​Ya could definitely improve on.

In one sentence, better than Shigure, which makes it the best Izakaya in Tribeca (the best in lower Manhattan champion remains with Yopparai, IMO).
Sake list is alright, standard offering. I got the Kotsuzumi Rojo Hana Ari (bloom on the path, in Eng). Smooth, silky and lightly creamy.
For food, I got the tako wasa. Was good but I think Fukurou has better one. Nasu Ageni, JP eggplant in soba broth. Love it. You can’t go wrong with nasu, really. My favorite of the night was the Grindara Saikyo Yai (grilled black cod in Kyoto style miso). Perfectly cooked, not a minute more or less. Über buttery, savory though slightly saltier than I prefer. I would come back just for this one.
Regardless I was full, I ordered the Seiro Soba — it is their icon dish! And i am glad I did. It was served cold along a dipping sauce which is made of kombu dashi, bonito, mirin and soy sauce. i could only finish half of it but I would def recommend it.
All in all, very good meal. Service was very good; GM Nicholas was great, who told me that the Japanese owner is expanding business in the US.
Would def come back whenever I want a Izakaya fare.

Daruma-​Ya is where the old «Greenwich Grill» was and it sure made me miss Greenwich Grill more now that I’ve paid a visit here.
Soooo, since this place calls themselves a Soba House, I was set on trying their soba set for lunch today. First, service was very friendly and attentive. The waiter first brought us a drink menu and asked what we wanted to drink. Then, he brought us the lunch menu and we ordered the Seiro Soba set which came with kobachi & takuan. The Kobachi they offered today was Japanese eggplant (not sure if that changes from time to time) and Takuan is some pickled radish.
Now, as for the Soba, we were asked if to serve cold or hot and we wanted cold soba. Their homemade soba noodles to me were seriously just «A-​OK». I’ve definitely had better ones elsewhere including those from Soba-​Ya on E. 9^th street. And for the side dish, there could definitely be improvements to include more varieties. The whole set just looked plain and not worth the $ 13.
And today we were constrained on time so did not have any dessert after our meal and so this review is just strictly on the soba set we have tried. Due to proximity to work place, I expect to come back here to try other items on the lunch menu in the near future. Hopefully, I will be able to come back and update my review with a better rating.
Oh yes, before I forget, there was a surprise today when our bill came. The menu states that the soba set is $ 13, but we got charged $ 16 each. Did not order anything else other than soba, so not sure what happened there. Just a FYI for those who are also interested in trying this place.