Typhoon Lounge

I came here with a large group of friends over the summer. We ordered a lot of sushi and tapas. Though nothing really stood out. The venue does look nice and there are private rooms downstairs where you can sit on the floor and eat in a traditional Japanese setting.

My very first impression of this restaurant was not good at all. I went with a group of friends and they first they gave us a hard time with making reservation with a really strict policy that if we don’t show up on the dot we would lose the reservation well guess what, on a Saturday night at 7:30pm, their basement was literally empty. Their menu certainly did not offer a great variety of selections, they really need to invest in making their menus look better rather then just buying sheet protectors and binders from staples to put a portfolio together and calling it a menu.
Now on to the quality of food, their sushi was horrible just as how other fellow helpers have mentioned, I think pre-​made sushi from a local grocery could make better sushi then these guys. As for their ramen, they just added way too much water to the soup base resting a much worse taste then eating instant ramen noodles — I think that might be a better investment.
So overall I did not have a great experience at all with this restaurant and I would certainly not reconsider on returning to this restaurant.

I love this place!
Most of the time when me and my friends go to St Marks we end up eating at this place. A lot of the restaurants that are in St Marks are pretty good, but the downsize of them is that the really good one have like 2 hours wait. So going down another block, there is Typhoon! With incredible food, and no wait!
I love their food, if you are a Japanese food fan, this is a place you must explore. I normally have Chirashi, its sushi is very very fresh, and the rice is so yummy! Another dish that I recommend is the friend kimchi with pork (I am not sure what is the name of the dish) but I love it! It’s a great appetizer to share with friends.
Their staff are really nice too, in terms of the environment, usually there is not that many people and you will feel more comfortable eating and talking to your friends. Some other places in St. Marks are really really tiny, you might be seated on a table with your friends but it seems that you are in the next table because their are awfully close due to lack of space! But in typhoon it’s location is very spacious and it’s not as noisy as other places.
I love sushi, and this is one of the great places that I have tried in Manhattan.

This past weekend, my friend planned a group dinner at Typhoon Lounge. I called the restaurant 3 – 4 times to make a reservation and no one picked up, so I decided to personally visit the restaurant at 5PM to make the reservation. The hostess was very kind and took my reservation. However, I wasn’t too happy with the pricing because we have such a huge party. I made a reservation for 16 people and if you have a party over six, each individual was required to order a minimum of $ 15.00 of food/​drinks and 20% gratuity was charged.
The restaurant was very spacious and definitely a place to keep in mind for a large party. They have a large seating area downstairs which is where my friends & I sat and tea rooms too. The décor here is warm and simplistic. There was a dance that these people did around the restaurant and it was a little bit creepy, but I guess it’s something they do to welcome the customers at Typhoon Lounge. The service here is… mediocre.
Everyone ordered their own appetizers and a lot of food. Unfortunately, I couldn’t snap every piece of food that I wanted to, but I tried my best. You know what else stinks? This restaurant doesn’t have any menu available for you to take home with you. I know they don’t do take out really or delivery, but what if someone wants a menu because they don’t remember the name of the dishes? Any way, here’s a review of the food I’ve tried with my boyfriend that I can remember and did take pictures of:
Takoyaki: A must-​have at any Japanese restaurant in St. Marks, but only when it’s on their menu. The takoyaki at Typhoon Lounge looked exactly like the ones from Village Yokocho. Deep fried, fluffy, and decorated with bonito flakes on top. However, I feel the taste wasn’t as rich and desirable as Village Yokocho’s takoyaki. It didn’t feel as though there was enough takoyaki sauce on the takoyaki. It was just mediocre.
Ramen: I actually don’t know the actual name of the ramen that my boyfriend ordered. My boyfriend was curious to try their ramen, but he regretted it after he tried it. He despised it so much. I mean cleary the broth was a total sham. It just tasted like a bowl full of soy sauce. The vegetables weren’t traditional vegetables used in ramen. They used yu choy instead. This ramen was a total bummer.
Omu-​Don: I decided to order this and basically it was an omlette with korean fried rice and chicken cubes inside. I was curious to see what it tasted like. It sure looked good, but it didn’t taste that great. There was hardly any flavor in it and it was bland in my opinion.
Fried Calamari: Definitely NOT the best I’ve had. No salt, no pepper, no seasoning. Just a wedge of lemon and korean hot sauce to dip with.
Edamame: It was probably one of the only foods I enjoyed that night. They were steamy hot and lightly salted, perfection.
I never tried Typhoon Lounge before and it was a hit or miss. I personally don’t think I’ll be returning to Typhoon Lounge. Their food definitely needs a little more flavor.

So I placed this place two weeks ago and have been dying to try it out. It has a really nice ambiance and even has a downstairs that I’m sure gets really rowdy at night. On a Tuesday night, the place was practically empty. Which was perfect because I was extremely hungry. The menu had really interesting items and we wanted to give the new things a shot.
We ordered the macaroni and cheese with mushrooms and shrimp, the omu rice, fried kimchi things, and fried lotus root dumplings. The macaroni and cheese, at $ 6, was a great deal. It was served freshly baked in an oriental bowl. It’s not your average american mac and cheese, it definitely had an asian spin on it and I enjoyed it, even though it was really oily. The fried lotus dumplings were good but the kimchi thing was a little spicy for me. Also the serving was really large. The omu rice was by far my favorite. It was flavorful and the best omu rice I’ve had thus far. I’ll definitely be stopping by this place again. Next time, for drinks!

As if East Village is not already overwhelmed with drunkards every weekend, on the annual Let’s Get Drunk Day celebration, I mean St. Patrick’s Day, the neighbourhood is absolutely inundated with all kinds of stupidity. You have your drunken NYU kids. You have your drunken Bridge & Tunnel. You have your drunken I-​Moved-​Here-​Because-​Of-​Sex-​And-​The-​City chicks. Etc etc. You get the picture.
It was a Saturday night and I had stayed home most of the night, working on a little side project. It was already 2am when I hit a milestone and decided to stop. I was feeling happy and wanted to go have a beer. So I tasked myself with Mission Impossible: finding a relatively quiet and relaxed establishment in East Village that is not full of douchebags to get a drink, at 2am on the Saturday night of St. Patrick’s Day weekend.
I really lucked out in finding Typhoon Lounge. There is table seating in the back, but sitting at the bar in the front were people who were obviously regulars. A quick look around revealed also that Japanese people in the neighbourhood liked to frequent this place. The movie about Biggie was playing on the TV screen at the bar, and people at the bar were just watching the movie, chatting, and drinking some beers. Perfect for what I was looking for.
They only have Sapporo on draft as far as beer goes, so I ordered a glass. I was also hungry so I decided to try the Japanese risotto with crab meat and egg — an interesting dish. While waiting for my food and listening to the bartender chat with her customers, it became obvious why all the people sitting at the bar were regulars. The bartender, Miu, is basically one of the coolest chicks you’re likely to meet in this city. She’s very chatty, very friendly, down-​to-​earth, and is always laughing about something. She also happens to be the first Zainichi Korean I would meet.
What is a Zainichi Korean? I’m glad you asked. A Zainichi Korean is an ethnic Korean from Japan. Many of them, as it was in Miu’s case, do not speak Korean and do not have much connection to Korean culture. They are more or less Japanese, except in the genetic sense. Because of the controversial requirements of them to naturalise to become Japanese citizens, most Zainichi Koreans are actually not Japanese citizens despite having been born and raised in Japan. But rather, they are Korean citizens.
My Japanese risotto with crab meat and egg was pretty good. And since that Saturday night I’ve been back to Typhoon Lounge several times already. Their food menu consists of various Japanese street food dishes as well as ramen dishes. I would have to say that my favourite so far is the pork in plum sauce. But really, you all need to go check out Typhoon Lounge, sit at the bar, and tell Miu that Radford sent you.

Décor & service are pretty generic.
Good for groups.
As for the food? Don’t expect too much…

On a crowded block of St. Mark’s Place, Typhoon is a great location… a nondescript exterior and ironically the restaurant having previously been a Spanish tapas place chose to keep the interior intact… but don’t be fooled this is a Japanese restaurant.
Two-​storied, there is room for larger groups, either in private shoji-​screened rooms or in the main dining room. The menu is cumbersome, but worth taking the time to go through… a couple recommendations that we enjoyed: hijiki (sweet seaweed salad), octupus balls with bonita flakes, steak tips in a simmering pan, chicken fried rice wrapped in an omelet (very good), kimchi fried rice, miso-​glazed eggplant, and a variety of sushi and sashimi choices… great options to share with groups. The food is served as it is ready, very flavorful and traditional dishes. Also very reasonably priced.
There are also a lot of inventive cocktails to choose from… we had the shochu, barley-​vodka essentially, is served with grapefruit purée, very fresh and palette cleansing.
Close to many bars/​places to go out… worth trying.

Blowing up another spot. Clearly I’m on a adrenaline fueled Unilocaling mowing down spot after spot rage! NO ONE CAN STOP ME! Get of o my way, NOW!
Why are you retards ordering sushi here? You deserve to have had a 2 star dining experience here. I hope you don’t come back.
I’ve been here maybe 20 times or so, here’s what’s good:
* it’s Japanese «small» (not always small) tapas style plates, great for sharing
* extensive sake selection
* cheap beer pitchers
* awesome downstairs back semi-​private dining area you can reserve, seats about 8 to 10, barefoot dining action. that means authentic, uh, right?
Dishes: (crap, no online menu i can find, i’ll try my best):
* sakura beef steak cubes
* miso flavored beef
* kim chi yaki udon
* fried squid legs
* curry rice
* chicken karaege (fried chicken — just wanna prove i’m legit with the japanese name, tho mispelled)
* croquettes
Ah, fark it, i give up. Just ask them what’s good. There’s like 50 to 100 things on their menu.
Gets crowded on weekends. Great value.

Typhoon Lounge is a bit farther east from the chaos of St Marks, and I was so glad Vicky L. took us there. There was no wait and the restaurant was spacious enough, cute, and chill. We ordered way too much food and the bill was completely reasonable. The food was awesome too, and we enjoyed our drinks — beer, cocktail, and sake. In food, we had the raw oysters, the country style beef bowl, fried potato, cod roe pasta, diced beef jalapeño sauce, buttered flounder with marinated mushrooms, a fried fish dish, and two rolls. My favorites were the beef bowl and the buttered flounder, yum.

During their Anniversary special, their rolls were pretty cheap.
But crappy.
Yeah sorry Typhoon Lounge. You were crappy. There’s no need to use 2 cups of rice to make 2 rolls.
My friend and I did an experiment. We peeled off the rice from our rolls.. .and yes. TWO cups of rice.
Ridiculous. Yeah. Cheap rolls. 80% rice, 10% wrap, 10% actual roll ingredients.

WTF TYPHOON!!!
It’s been awhile since I’ve been here and boy has it gone downhill. To me, Typhoon has always been the cheaper sushi option without giving up being «regular». That is no longer the case.
Do they have new owners? I think so.
Their new idea of a spicy tuna roll is a teeny tiny sliver of tuna with a ton of rice with spicy mayo spread on top. UGH, I prefer whole foods sushi over this garbage any day.
Do not order the spring rolls. It is not a spring roll. You’d picture small 3″ rolls of fried goodness. No. It was literally a 10 ton fried BURRITO filled with garbage. Ugh.
Typhoon, please close down, now.

This place is bigger than you’d expect. They have the upstairs area, downstairs, and a couple private rooms. Came here on a Saturday night and it didn’t get crowded until around 10pm or so.
Everything here was very mediocre.
— the service isn’t the best and the employees aren’t very friendly
— there’s almost always a wait for the bathroom
— their TAKOYAKI weren’t homemade, they were from frozen packages
— GREEN TEA ICE CREAM was nothing special
— Their cocktail (Calpico-​based) tasted pretty good but was a bit too sweet

We ordered a bunch of tapas to share. Pretty much all of them exceed expectations.
Most dishes have fancy garnish, as part of Japanese conventional style.
Their raw oyster platter, in particular, has extremely sophisticated taste with very unique seasonings. And believe it or not, it cost 9 dollars for 6 pieces.
Other stuff were quite cheap as well. Given the ambiance and food quality, I gotta say, what a steal!

I was there last nite with my girlfriend and really had a great time. The place itself is very cool, even though if it weren’t for the Japanese lanterns it would look like a Mexican taverna.
The service was kind and the food was tasty. We ordered only tapas, as I read that sushi here isn’t really their thing. After our meal we were very full, so it’s cheap and filling (great combo). The fried ice-​cream was not great, so I wouldn’t recommend it. This is what we had, and they were all pretty good:
spring rolls with pork, shrimp, mushrooms and veggies
Japanese style fish cake mozzarella stick
fried stuffed lotus roots
grilled enoki mushroom & bacon skews
fried calamari
octopus balls
steamed crab dumplings
I will definitely go back, maybe with a group of friends, so we can get one of their private rooms where u can sit on the floor.

The menu is vast. There are so many choices that it is pretty overwhelming. In the end, I just decided not to get an appetizer at all. For an entrée, I ordered the salmon don. The salmon was surprisingly soft, but it did not taste fresh. It lacked the sea smell and familiar bite of a freshly caught salmon. The salmon roe that accompanied it were sad, little, wrinkled orange balls. They were slightly salty, but mostly tasted as if they were dried out from standing out on the sushi counter too long. The rice was acceptable, it was soft and sweet, but not too vinegary.
The atmosphere reminds me slightly of kenkas — wooden tables, dirty floors, huge menu. I can confirm there were random gnats all over the place. They were extremely irritating when I was eating.
If you can help it, head over somewhere else.

Nom nom nom… this place is delicious! When coming to this place, its better to make reservation or you will have to wait for a long time. We came here on Friday night and it was packed! But we made reservation. For appetizers, we had their mussels and it was delicious! Yum!!! We had order 5 sushi rolls (I forgot the names of them) and a lot of Sake and Sapporo beer. Plus, we also learned from other patrons how to really do a sake bomb! Yay! Their prices are pretty inexpensive. I was pretty shocked since this is NYC. LOL! Will definitely come back again! Oh yeah! I don’t remember the name but there’s a drink– lychee sake drink (it was delish!!! Must try)

This place is terrible. STAY AWAY!!!
My family came on a recent Sunday night (11÷07÷10), around 5PM. My wife likes ½ price sushi deals, and wanted to give this place a try. We were the first table to sit down and the second table to order sushi. As there was just one sushi chef working that night, the waitress convinced us to order a non-​sushi appetizer, so we ordered some fried squid.
The squid was decently fried, but pretty tasteless.
Although we were expecting to be served sushi second, we were delightfully surprised when we were served first. Our happiness quickly turned into profound disappointment, however, after the plate of sushi was presented to us. With the exception of the California rolls, all the fish-​based rolls, like spicy salmon and yellow tail, all were gigantic 2 inch rice rolls, with a paltry dab of chopped fish meat in the center. (I will upload a photo to Unilocal.) The pink fish flesh looked like the size of a pencil eraser tips stuck in rice. We were just incredulous. My wife and I have had ½ price sushi in other places, where the deal is meant to draw customers on a slow night. However, we have never seen such rip-​offs. Not just that, the fish did not even taste fresh.
We ate a few rolls each, deluding ourselves that a few bites may change our minds. It didn’t. Ultimately, we got up, never finished sushi, and got takeout from excellent nearby eateries. I ordered from «This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef;» wifey had «Xian Famous Foods.»
Please stay away. This sorry excuse of a restaurant needs to close immediately.

Go here not for their sushi, but for their home cooking dishes and the tapas style simple delicacies. I always order the potato salad.
Some other suggestions that I agree with are on Daichi K’s review.

— very reasonable pricing
— spotty service, waited over 30 minutes for the check when there was only one other table
— surprisingly fresh and well cut tuna
— enjoyed the music selection of the evening
— I want to say it was overall a good experience, but I felt sick by the end of the meal :(