Divine Japanese Home Cooking in NYC

On a recent visit to BarFry, Josh DeChellis's ode to tempura in New York City's West Village, I chatted up a server about his favorite restaurants. When I said that I adored the Japanese home cooking at Chiyono in the East Village, he said that I needed to try another restaurant. Unfortunately, he couldn't remember its name, chef, or address—though he kept on saying that it was absolutely amazing. The closest he got to any specifics was that it was somewhere on East 42nd Street. So as much as I wanted to check it out, my Googling skills failed me, and whenever I had an inkling to tromp up and down that lengthy stretch of Midtown, another restaurant—whose name, chef or address rung clearly in my head—would always beckon instead. But this morning, catching up on my post-Thankgiving food blog reading, I finally discovered the restaurant's name—Tsukushi—in Frank Bruni's roundup of restaurants chefs visit for the New York Times's Diner's Journal (the restaurant is where Asiate chef Nori Sugi loves to go). For the record, Tsukushi's chef is Norihiko Manabe, and it's on 41st Street, just off of Second Avenue; it's also where you'll spot me one of these chilly nights very soon.