Delicious spot in Chelsea Market for Japanese-Mexican street-food mash-ups. They serve Japanese inspired Mexican food, creating interesting dishes by combining two cuisines with deep, rich, and unique cuisines. Take it easy and sit at the bar while enjoying their delicious food. You can also take it to go if you are in a hurry.
We got 2 Bento Boxes ($11.71/each), which includes choice of 2 tacos and 1 side, and comes with a small salad. For the first Bento Box, we chose Japanese Curry Beef taco and Sapporo Braised Short rib. Japanese Curry Beef comes with medium spiced Japanese style curry, cotija cheese, napa cabbage slaw, all in gyoza shell. Sapporo Braised Short rib comes with Napa cabbage, Japanese mustard, scallion, wasabi crema, black sesame seeds, all in corn tortilla. As for the side, we chose Japanese Rice & Beans Brown rice, which comes with edamame, scallion, pinto bean, black bean, shochu salsa. Each item costs more than $4 if you order individually, so the Bento Box is a pretty good deal.
The Japanese curry stole the show on this one. It was really flavorful and amazingly delicious! The beef was tender and had absorbed all the curry flavor into it, and the use of gyoza shell was very interesting. The short rib taco was nice also, but not as good as the curry. The meat was tender and juicy as well, and it had nice wasabi flavor which was not too strong.
For the second Bento Box, we chose Asian Citrus Veggie and Japanese Curry Beef. As for the side, we chose Chips with Shochu Salsa. Asian Citrus Veggie comes with Charred corn, shishito pepper, tomato, edamame, avocado, citrus soy, cilantro, sesame seeds, all in corn tortilla. This was very refreshing and tasty. They also have the Charred Corn Salad which is basically the filling of this taco, if you want it as a side instead of taco. The chips were really tasty, it had a nice kick to it from the shishito pepper. It was very addictive!!! Super crispy and the salsa was pretty nice also.
If you want a quick yet delicious food inside the Chelsea Market, this is the spot! Even if you are NOT in a hurry, you should still check this place out. It is better than you expect (at least it was for me), and you can even take it to go if you need, which is awesome!
Takumi Taco – 75 9th Avenue, New York, NY 10011