Davelle

With only three tables and ten barstools, Davelle’s Lower East Side space is quaint and small, especially when compared to chef-owner Yudai Kanayama’s ambitions. The all-day menu reads like a primer in the multifarious subgenres and vocabularies of Japanese cuisine: By day it’s a kissaten (literally “tearoom,” but in this case, third-wave coffee shop), specializing in yoshoku, or Japanese-style Western food. Breakfast translates to a hefty slab of soft Japanese milk bread slathered with butter and bean paste, accompanied by a hard-boiled egg and a scoop of sticky potato salad served in a teacup. For lunch, you want the curry rice, devised from scratch to mimic the flavor of a ubiquitous store-bought mix, or the Spicy Cod Caviar spaghetti, which is springy, creamy, briny, and soothing in equal measure. The dinner menu expands to include oden, the Japanese stew, based on a dashi broth Kanayama replenishes like a sourdough starter. Rather than combine your choice of ingredients in a single bowl, Kanayama offers them individually as sets of five or ten, ensuring each mochi-stuffed fried tofu skin and daikon radish gets the undivided attention it deserves.