Takashi

The city’s offal-loving community has been greatly saddened by the death of Takashi Inoue, whose eponymous Japanese-Korean yakiniku restaurant has been a destination for what blood-and-guts-loving chefs like to call “the nasty bits” ever since it opened in the West Village in 2010. Inoue’s partner has kept the West Village restaurant open since Inoue’s death, and as long as this continues there’s no better place in town to enjoy the classic yakiniku experience, which includes all sorts very good traditional parts of the animal (skirt steak, Kobe-quality short rib) sizzled at the table or bar in front of you, along with the usual parade of nasty bits (beef hearts, liver, tendon, aorta, cow stomachs, and yes, three kinds of tongue), along with inspired gourmet creations like Kobe-beef-sausage andouillette, calves’ brains with blinis and caviar, and strange, enticing fusion inventions like “Testicargot,” which the menu describes as “cow balls escargot style, with garlic shiso butter.”