Credit: John Kessler
Credit: John Kessler
Sushi Huku, a pioneering Japanese restaurant in northwest Atlanta, had been around for decades when Jey Oh took it over several years ago. A dedicated and conscientious student of his craft, Oh brought a modern sensibility to his work, and soon enough his bar began to attract the city’s coterie of sushi freaks.
For his second act, Oh has come further intown, perhaps a bit closer to his core audience. Craft Izakaya, now open in the Krog Street Market, gives Oh a new stage in the form of a sushi bar behind which you will find him most evenings. But this restaurant, with its expansive dining room and upstairs loggia, tries to be something else, as well.
An izakaya is a traditional Japanese pub where guests order small plates off a varied menu to give them something to nibble on with their beers and cocktails. In Japan these establishments don’t belong to the world of dining as much as to the realm of mizu shobai, or “water trade.” This demimonde of drinking establishments — karaoke clubs, taverns, hostess bars, nightlife hidey holes — pack along slender alleys, stack up on every floor in no-name buildings, and descend into underground warrens. The best izakayas are the ones hidden in plain sight.
Credit: John Kessler
Credit: John Kessler
Oh and his partner, Richard Tang, aren’t the first to bring the izakaya intown (Miso Izakaya is just up the street), but they approach the venture with full-tilt gusto and a menu offering more than 80 dishes.
After several visits, I find myself of two minds on Craft Izakaya. In a flash, it has become the best sushi bar on the east side of town. You want Oh and Co. to select your uni, cut your hamachi and to hand form your nigiri.
But I don’t totally buy the izakaya side of things. Some of the efforts are good, but taken as a whole this kitchen doesn’t offer the scope or lightness of touch that can make an izakaya meal the best drunk food ever.
The menu, a glossy collage of close-up photos of plated food, makes first-timers giggle. Never have California rolls or edamame looked quite so lurid and in your face. It also breaks its offerings down by cooking method (or lack thereof): fried, grilled, steamed, raw. Japanese diners, almost by second nature, pay attention to these divisions and construct meals of a dish from each.
Credit: John Kessler
Credit: John Kessler
This kitchen likes to fry, and does so well. Oyster katsu, palm-sized Pacific oysters flattened in breadcrumbs, arrive crisp and scrumptious. Small shrimp called kawaebi are thrown shell and all into the fryer, and they emerge as crisp and easygoing as potato chips, but with a burst of sweet juices in the center. Oh tips his hat to his own Korean heritage with a plate of fried rice cakes in spicy sauce.
Tofu, croquettes, whole baby flounders and chicken wings also emerge from the fryer, but you need balance, so you might turn to the steamed and simmered section of the menu. I love the ochazuke, a kind of porridge made from green tea, rice, salmon roe and tangy pickled plum. At first bland on the tongue, it pops with salinity and sourness. You also might opt for an order of wasabi shumai — seafood dumplings pumped with enough of the green horseradish to feel like someone stuck a firecracker up your nostril. Small bites, people.
The grilled items prove more problematic. This kitchen makes a grand grilled yellowtail collar. Poke through the crisp skin of this bony apparition, and you’ll find pockets of lush white meat as rich as cream.
Other grilled items? Not so much. Skip the greasy and limp yakisoba noodles that are pictured alongside on the menu, as well as the chewy whole cuttlefish in a too-sweet sauce.
There are a dozen grilled skewers listed under the “Yakitori” header, but none is worth your time.
You want to taste seasoned meat cooked quickly over the extreme heat of clean charcoal, either the bittersweet caramel dance achieved by a light brush of sweetened soy tare or the purer flavor of sea salt glazing the meat’s expressed fat. Here, you get wan bits of chicken, pork belly or mushroom — neither seasoned nor charred — served with some fancy little dipping sauces in a fancy little dish.
And there are few of the simple grilled items I consider the joy of an izakaya, such as flame-grilled eggplant and whole Pacific saury.
While I’m at it, a few more lighter items from the izakaya repertoire — blanched sesame spinach, marinated lotus roots, mizuna salad — could lift the meal, and make you want to stay for another round.
Once sushi enters the picture, you see what this restaurant is really about. Oh makes a number of creative raw fish appetizers, the best being a ball of spicy chopped tuna wrapped in slivered avocado. You spoon it onto warm fried seaweed chips and create a swoony bite of colliding textures and temperatures.
For your first visit, you might order a combination plate of 12 slices of fish and 7 pieces of nigiri, then take turns choosing the choicest bits of yellowtail, amberjack, mackerel and squid. Oh doesn’t skimp on the good stuff. For your second visit, you should just get a couple of izakaya plates then proceed directly to an omakase (chef’s choice) of sushi. This strategy resulted in by far the most pleasurable meal I’ve had at Craft.
However you order, you will be drinking well. Thomas McGuire and his wingwoman, Arianne Fielder, run a smart craft cocktail program for the restaurant and for a cute little bar that lies outside the dining room, facing instead the central market area. That’s where I best like to sample their wares, from a smartly updated Boulevardier to a tart fizz made with shochu and soursop. Izakaya food, I think, best likes a tall, icy-cold Asahi draft.
I say this from experience — perhaps far too much. I started frequenting izakayas soon after college when I moved to Kyoto for a job. The meals one constructs are somehow all the better for being incidental to the beer and camaraderie. You don’t go to an izakaya to wallow in that greasy cheeseburger feeling or to ooh and aah over artful creations, but rather to eat the simple things you like and not get too full in the process. You want to keep going, keep the night young.
When I get that feeling at Craft Izakaya, I’ll report back.
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