Yakitori Tora

Love their uni with egg and chicken over rice. It’s so delicious. Services are great, and the greentea icecream with cake is really different too.

Visted the yakitori tora after seeing positive reviews, but I was mostly disappointed. Mainly because most of foods were too bland in taste. and the service was also reckless. Was it because we came one hour before their closing hour? Only thing I liked about this place was the interior design of the restaurant.

It’s my second time here.
It’s kind of pricy for yakitori, but they make very delicious food. I actually found I love their vegetable skewers more. The Yakitori Don is a good choice if you want to taste the skewers off the stick, together with rice.
Ah, the Tender with Wasabi is very juicy.

Taste is good. I took Tsukune and Negima and some of Yakitiri. After finish eating, I was surprised. Very expensive!!! I will never come back.

Is this a pricy place? Yes! Is the food delicious? Yes! Is the service good? Yes! Will I come back? YES!
Came here because I recently found out it’s opened by the same owner of my other favorite Izakaya: Fukurou. Yet price is high, the quality of food definitely matches the price, absolutely delicious!
They do an great job taking care of the smoke while keeping a bright open kitchen. It’s a delightful experience watching your food being grilled closely yet don’t need to worry about the smell.
This is a small place, may hold up to 20 ppl, and it enables them to well arrange the timing of the grill. I think the waitress and chef were watching the pace customers eats. Most my dishes came when the previous one was almost finished. Timing matters a lot for Yakitori! Thumbs up for Tora.
I highly recommend the Dashimaki Tamago with Snow Crab, Beef Tongue and Tsukune!

Tora was open from noon to 2:30 on Saturday, but you’d never know it by peeking inside or looking it up on Google or Unilocal.The small place (20 seats) was empty except for the chef and assistant, who mainly appeared to be preparing for dinner service. For brunch they only have three menu choices each a «bento box» of three stacked boxes each like a different course with several items, plus miso soup. For example, the first box had edamame, potato salad, egg rolls, and octopus slices. Choose chicken, fish, or beef as your protein in your second box. The bento box lunch was really good! But they do not serve yakitori for lunch, which is odd for a restaurant with Yakitori in its name.

Well, I want to bring up two facts that I found about this location — 1) Yakitora Tora serves a good food. 2) They are very pricey, possibly over-​priced.
Spot is very small. Arrangement is like 4~5 table + Yakitori bar. I don’t think it would be good idea if you are planning to visit here with large group yet I don’t think you will find hard time to get a seat for this place as place was pretty much unfilled.
As I see the menu, I found friendly name of dishes with unusual price. Most of Yakitori were selling for $ 5 or more and 10 set of Yakitori were $ 58.99. It might not be proper comparison but it was not easy to order 10 sets as I know Yakitori Taisho has their set menu for less than $ 14. It was price that you can order more than 30 yakitori from Taisho. We ordered 10 set of yakitori, wasabi tako and Dashimaki Tamago with Snow Crab.
Everything was delicious and were great quality of foods. I could say that they must be using better ingredients compare to other places, and some of skewer were very unique as well. Thou, I never thought having a meal at Yakitori place could give you check in amount of $ 200, I meant for 2 people. I meant it’s yakitori — which commonly considered as not expensive, so I couldn’t avoid the feeling that they are very pricey.
I still think that I will return to location as I felt that some of their dish was extra ordinary which I never have tasted from other places.

food was good and great service but overpriced. I ordered the tofu with spicy scallop, tomago (pretty good) and uni and chicken over rice.

This place is very authentic when it comes to Japanese cuisine. I went there with my boyfriend who is a native Japanese chef and food lover; he confirmed that the yakitori was prepared very well. We ordered the 10 skewer set and a few other items. I loved everything about this place: the food, the staff service, and the ambiance. We went at around 9:45pm on a Thursday night and it was so perfect for having a relaxed conversation; not crowded at all. Many of the customers and the entire restaurant staff spoke Japanese so it was like stepping out of NYC and into a part of Japan. I thought that was pretty cool. Definitely one of my favorite places of all time!

Overpriced for the taste. Only good for small groups (4 ppl or fewer).
Got the five skewer combo — the okra wrapped in bacon and the chicken thigh skewer were enjoyable enough but nothing stood out. The Berkshire pork cheek was disappointing in taste and texture. I’d say each person would have to eat five skewers plus share a few of the apps or another hot dish in order to be full (~$ 50 per person).
Of the cold appetizers I particularly liked the chilled tofu with spicy scallop. The cucumber and seaweed apps were not special.
What I had never had before was the rice ball with wasabi leaf in dashi broth. It was very warming and hearty and I was intrigued by a new dish… but again, I wasn’t wowed by the taste.
Points for an authentic feel but not worth going for what’s basically grilled food with average marination and accompanying sauces.

My favorite yakitori in NYC. Friendly owner, and impeccably attentive service. Enjoy the charmingly narrow space and natural wooden bar. Try the raw octopus with wasabi.

i really like to eat things on sticks. so naturally, i love my yakitori and this place has been bookmarked for months. after my friend and i realized it was a friday night and every spot was packed, i remembered yakitori tora and luckily there was an empty table.
the food? good.
amazing? no.
plus it’s fairly expensive but the quality of the meat and what not is higher. but the flavor and menu doesn’t wow my socks.
i will say that the foie gras yaki onigiri was my favorite thing i had.
service is fantastic and the spot is very well maintained.
so this isn’t a negative review, but just a «i enjoyed the meal but don’t feel an urge to ever go back» review.

I guess I must be sort of dense because I came here and I think I ordered all the wrong foods. I failed to acknowledge they are known for their skewers, which explains why while sitting at the bar I watched for a whole hour the chefs very deliberately taking a shit ton of care to cook the skewers to perfection. Anyways I ordered a tuna app, octopus app, skirt steak app (excuse my ignorance of the correct Japanese dish names), an Uni, chicken and egg don, and salmon rice balls. The skirt steak app was my favorite because the combination of the perfect amount of fat and condiments really made for a great bite of food with varying textures and taste that blended well. I was looking forward to a similar experience with the rest of the dishes, but the rest were honestly just very okay. That being said, I did fail to order any actual skewers so maybe those are amazing. The presentation and atmosphere of the food and restaurant were on point though. I guess I just wish that at this price point, all of the dishes would be consistently outstanding in terms of flavor.

My friend and I ordered a total of six skewers, two onigiris, and a tamago which came to a total of $ 70. It is on the pricey side but the impeccable service and experience they give you was well worth more. It was like going to Japan without traveling out of New York City.
I sat at the counter where I could see the chefs working. Their careful and precise measurements were also a very gratifying showcase. It’s what you would see in an introduction to a good food documentary.
We came here with no expectations and my taste buds were amazed. What brought me back to Okinawa was the washu beef onigiri (rice ball). It was an amazing piece of magic. I’m not going to describe why it’s amazing because you should try it for yourself and have that personal experience that I longed for when I was in Okinawa.
The skewers were prepped in front of you and they timed each one so that when you finish one, you’d get the next right after; like a course meal. We enjoyed them fully one after the other and we decided to order even more.
The tamago was also great. I saw the chef making he tamago in he beginning but I did not know he’d brand it. Because my friend and I were curious what was branded on the tamago, we decided to order one ourselves. It was so beautiful we didn’t want to eat it. But we had to. I took a bite and immediately closed my eyes. I had a ratatouille moment where all the flavors jumped back and forth, right to left, and left to right, which were really mostly eggs. Yes just eggs. But that moment was beautiful.
Happy customer, I am.

The place is s a gem. Kept passing by it because it never seemed to have many people there and finally stopped by Sunday night. Food is delicious. Can tell ingredients are fresher and better than most other japanese restaurants around, the seasoning is just right, flavors pop and linger. Got all of the veggie skewers that they had and each one was great! Just wish they had more vegetarian options with protein. Finally, the setup is beautiful and staff is incredibly sweet. Less scene-​y than other japanese places nearby and better food — win in my book. Finally, I don’t understand people complaining about prices. Yes, it’s more expensive. But ingredients, service, and atmosphere are way better too. Quality cost more. To quote Yohji, not everything is $ 1. You want cheap, go elsewhere.

My boyfriend and I was going to the Raman lab next door, but it’s closed on Sunday. So we come to this store cause it’s right next door. Once we sat down, we notice that it’s only a 3 stars restaurant, which make me kind of nervous. However, the service is really good. We had a authentic Asahi super dry draft beer and the meatball skewer, chicken tight, pork chick, beef tongue, and uni oyako don. Everything we ordered is amazingly delicious. Nothing let us down! Highly recommend this place!

Yakitori style cuisine is relatively scarce in NYC. Even if you do come across a establishment that serves it, the ambience frequently lacks — usually blandly generic or too crowded, competitive and frenetic. I enjoyed this style of cuisine many times during my frequent travels through Tokyo and Kyoto during the high flying 90’s, and there’s nothing like the real deal, but this place came close.
Yakitori is a taverna or bistro style experience of grilled meats and seasoned vegetables on wooden skewers and other tapas style small dishes served in smokey, dark, environs where people gather in chatty groups at the Yakitori bar, where the grills spit flames and the sake flows, or around tables equipped with mini grills, where you can cook your own skewers (sometimes) surrounded by sofas. The selections are small and delicately prepared, despite the grilling aspect, by design. Yakitori is not meant to fill, but to delight. It’s focused on chicken (organic chicken, succulent and delicious, in the case of Tora) and chicken parts (including the offal parts, such as livers, hearts, skin, all of which I adore), and deliciously seasoned vegetables, but there are also, seafood, pork and beef selections (including offal bits), also succulent and scrumptious. We chose to focus on the skewers for this first visit, but there is much more to delight your palate on the Tora menu.
Yakitori Tora is a tiny place but it evokes the rustic, taverna atmosphere that I remember from my visits to similar places in Japan. It’s mostly a stretch of wooden bar, with the cooking area and grills opposite, plus a small section of two person tables at the front of the place. We were highly encouraged by the realization that almost everyone in the place was Asian. Interestingly, the Ramen place next door, even tinier, was swamped with Westerners. Admittedly, Tora is expensive, and the Ramen next door was cheap, and Yakitori is not designed to be filling, while Ramen is designed to engorge you (don’t get me wrong, I love Ramen too), so I kind of get the disparity from the viewpoint of the American mind. But if they only knew what they were missing.
Suffice to say our bottle of saki and our ten skewers of veggies and meats (chef’s discretion as to what you would get next, which I loved) were absolutely delightful and delivered by a super friendly wait staff, two a time, at an even, relaxed pace. A very civilized and congenial experience. It was a pleasure to watch the Yakitori chefs prepare every skewer on the other side of the bar. The music piping in was great too, ranging from 70’s pop to soulful jazz to 30’s french cabaret crooners.
I’m giving Tora 5 stars because #1 — if’s pretty damned good, but also because it’s the closest to the real deal I have yet encountered in NYC. I’ve been to 3 other Yakitori establishments in NYC to date. It is pricey but I think it’s worth every penny and I plan to return.

The food is good and the chicken I got was organic and juicy. The duck skewers my friend got were good and he did not have anything bad to say, either. I have no complaints about how things were cooked. I can tell they know what they are doing. Even the rice I got was flavored with fish sauce and soy sauce lightly, which was very nice.
The prices are not justified at all, however. I simply cannot imagine spending 50 – 60 dollars for a set of 10 skewers that are very small (basically the amount of meat that would be on no more than 4 – 5 skewers).
Even the tea, which was acceptable in quality, was $ 5.00, which I conveniently found out after I got the check. The rice, although good, was small and was $ 3.00, still too much. It should have been complementary given the already inflated prices.
I would recommend this only if you have the money to spend (will be $ 100 easily for two people if you intend to be full). Otherwise I would pass on it.
I do not understand how this place will last if it keeps its prices at the level they are at. They should be cut in half to facilitate more traffic immediately.

The food here reminds me of the popular yakatori joint in st. marks. The only difference is it’s pricier and a fancier. Extensive menu with plentiful skewers to choose from. Must get the chicken nanban. I’d come back to try other things on the menu.

You get a more refined Village Yokocho skewers, a cool mascot Cat sculpture and painting, a mostly Japanese clientele (for now), and a 50% or higher price hype from VY.
Wish it can open as late as VY, and open for lunch.