The Upper East Side has a new Japanese restaurant, and this one is keeping things refreshingly focused. KURIYA has opened at 219 East 85th Street, bringing a compact Japanese soba house to Yorkville where bowls of buckwheat noodles meet seriously good seafood.
KURIYA comes from the team behind Suki Desu, the Upper East Side kaisendon restaurant, and takes a similarly approachable approach to Japanese dining. But instead of putting raw fish over rice, KURIYA is all about soba noodles—served hot or cold and paired with premium seafood, meat and flavorful broths.
The restaurant is tiny, with a street-stall-inspired setup that makes it feel more like a quick stop in Japan than a traditional sit-down Manhattan restaurant. And the prices are surprisingly friendly for the amount of seafood involved.
One of the signature bowls is the Kuriya, topped with a little bit of everything from the seafood case, including crab, ikura and uni. Another standout is the Umi, a zaru soba set served with generous portions of raw salmon and scallops. The most expensive soba sets top out around $22, making this a particularly compelling option for an affordable Upper East Side lunch.
There are smaller dishes, too, including three scallops for $15, topped with tobiko, dry chili, yuzu kosho and wasabi.
Not feeling seafood? The Gyu bowl brings beef, sweet onions and egg yolk into the mix, proving KURIYA isn’t completely obsessed with everything from the ocean.
For anyone searching for new Upper East Side restaurants, soba in NYC, Japanese food in Yorkville or affordable Japanese restaurants in Manhattan, KURIYA is one to put on the list.
Because sometimes the best new NYC restaurant isn’t huge.
Sometimes it’s tiny, serves soba, and costs $22.
