Kenka (not at all)Liveblog!

On Saturday night, i found myself at Kenka, a very unusual Izakaya in the East Village on St. Mark's Place. I had a pen and paper with me and decided to record my thoughts as the night went on and as my glasses of sake became empty. This is not a review, not really, but more of a transcript of a live blog of my experience:

Right now I'm sitting in Kenka, easily the strangest Izakaya I've ever seen. It's aggressively Japanese and purposefully so. It reminds me of the Japanese version of the 50's diners which in trying to hard to be everything 50s, prevent themselves from accurately mirroring the source.

The massive, colorful menu features a variety of flamboyant Japanese movie protagonists from a half dozen movies, while the back page sports the gigantic visage of Gamera alongside the bar's bizarre rule set, which includes gems like "Graffiti must be in Japanese" and "masturbation is forbidden!"

The walls are adorned with vintage movie posters and product ads from that era, the tables are warped slabs of wood and the chairs are barely wicker stools which much like the distorted music blazing out of the speakers, it probably there to accentuate the place's "Japanese-ness"

Fortunately, the place isn't all overwhelming kitch, the aforementioned menu is filled with dishes the likes of which I've never even seen in this country. That said, i didn't come here to eat, I'm here to drink, and that's where this place knocks it out of the park. The first six pages of the menu are devoted entirely to alcohol. There's a page for beer, one for cocktails, then two for shochu and two for sake.

The sake section is impressive features a few of my personal favorites, so I went ahead and ordered a glass of Suishin to start me off, the delicious and often elusive Suigei will be next.

The place smells of cotton candy, I see people outside making it at an adjoining stand, i guess that's a way to keep the people waiting entertained.

The food looks delicious and the crowd keeps ordering up dish after dish, perhaps they know something that i don't. I really wish I were hungry right now.

One "Authentic Japanese" thing here that i can do without is the open air front entrance, it's only 75 degrees tonight and this place is already uncomfortably warm.

The distorted music now playing has been identified as "she wears short shorts," I'm convinced that I'm experiencing some sort of fever dream.

Short Shorts was followed up by "if you're happy and you know it," in Japanese.

There's a group of college-age girls at the table in front of me, they look very confused and when they took a look at the menu, their expressions only got worse.

They ordered french fries, I'm guessing the deep fried whole frog turned them off...

I've come full circle on my opinion of this place, it is a kitchy, over the top 50's diner... just the Japanese variation.