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2017-04-19
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I've been to 3 Monkeys on many occasions, as it isn't that far from where I live and there aren't a lot of bars in this area. I even came here for my birthday once. But up until now, I hadn't eaten there, so the other day when my wife and I found ourselves with nothing else to eat, we came here.The menu is a little bizarre. Not the food, the design. It's got a lot of drawings of chimps on it. Now, you might think "OK, they named their restaurant '3 Monkeys' without knowing what a monkey is." But
The menu is a little bizarre. Not the food, the design. It's got a lot of drawings of chimps on it. Now, you might think "OK, they named their restaurant '3 Monkeys' without knowing what a monkey is." But on the menu, one of the chimps is saying, "Quit looking at me like that. We're monkeys but you just don't know it yet." Is this some sort of militant cladistics prescriptivism? Because actually, I'm on board with that.
Linguistic and taxonomical issues aside, let's talk about food:
Cheese Mochi: "Chargrilled mochi balls loaded with melted cheese" ($58/ 3pcs). It sounds good, but it's basically very soft bread with tasteless fake cheese in it. Limp, empty calories: Not recommended.
Okra: "Crunchy okra, soy, shichimi, bonito flakes" ($40). I was a little disappointed that there were no shishito peppers on the menu. It's so hard to find green vegetables at some Japanese places. Anyway, the okra were nicely crunchy.
Aspara-Roll: "Fresh asparagus in Kurobuta sheets" ($44 each, so $88 total). The other green vegetable we got was asparagus wrapped in pork. If you don't know this, Kurobuta pigs are actually from England originally and are there known as Berkshire pigs. But you're here for a food review, so: the asparagus was also nicely crunchy, and the pork was a good touch.
Negima: "Thigh meat, piquant scallions" ($80 total)/ Nagasaki Neck: "Soy and chicken jus" ($80 total). I'm going to roll my chicken reviews into one paragraph. So, Yardbird is just down the street from 3 Monkeys. The prices at the two places are similar. The quality is not. It's hard to say exactly what makes one skewer of chicken delicious and another one, with the same part of the chicken, merely OK. The chicken at 3 Monkeys is merely OK, if you want chicken, go to Yardbird.
Galbi 'Our Style': "Garlic and chili marinated rib" ($120 total). 3 Monkeys' style of galbi is not as good as pretty much any galbi at a Korean joint. It just wasn't saucy or flavorful enough. The meat was cooked fine and all, I just wanted much more of a garlicky punch.
Yaki Yasai: "Grilled garden vegetables, sake, and garlic" ($92). This was actually my favorite dish of the meal. We were going to order some mushroom skewers, but our server dissuaded us because she said that this dish we had ordered had a bunch of mushrooms in it (and it did). I don't recall from the experience, but looking at the picture it looks like shimeji and oyster mushrooms, mostly, with some other sliced veggies and a bit of cabbage (more hiding beneath the mushrooms). I thought the flavors were well-balanced, and you could notice the garlic, in a good way.One complaint we had about 3 Monkeys was the pacing. We were some of the only customers in the restaurant, so I think they just threw all our skewers at once on the grill and then brought them out at pretty much the same time. This meant we either had to inhale them or eat some of them cold, and I can't breathe pork. Perhaps my tepid opinion of the meat skewers had something to do with eating them cold.
The total for the food above is $518 and that's before service charge or drinks are factored in. It didn't particularly strike me as worth it. The pacing was off, the taste was OK, but nothing special, and 3 Monkeys no longer has that great $28 bottle of craft Japanese beer that used to beckon me through the door. I'll probably come back for a drink sometime, but the food didn't impress.
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