Hungry City - SakaMai on the Lower East Side - NYTimes.com Ed Lefkowicz for The New York Times A Japanese restaurant that is filtered through an American consciousness. Order skate at SakaMai, and what arrives is not a frond of delicate flesh but a stack of broken wings, still threaded with cartilage and lustrous as capiz shells. They are corrugated and chewy, having been dried like jerky and broiled until the edges are curled to ocher. In Japan, they would appear with mayonnaise, but here the dip is yogurt, silkier, its tang intensified by yuzu kosho, a swirl of lemon, salt and chile. Order sea urchin and sturgeon caviar, and what arrives is a study in orange and black over loose scrambled eggs (simmered at low temperature, in the French style), framed by a sea-urchin shell still shaggy with spines. On the menu this is called, fancifully, Egg on Egg on Egg. Would it be niggling to note that the part of the sea urchin involved is not, technically, the eggs, but the reproductive organs? The first dish is izakaya, or pub food, meant to be eaten compulsively, without contemplation. The second aspires, in its fragility and miniaturist proportions, to the precision of kaiseki, the formal multicourse meal that accompanies the Japanese tea ceremony. What are they doing on the same menu? SakaMai, which opened in December on the Lower East Side, does not commit to one genre of Japanese cuisine or mode of dining. A group may comfortably share a heap of airy lotus-root crisps, round and perforated like old telephone dials. But a small bowl of the egg custard called chawan mushi (permeated with foie gras and veiled with a dashi glace mottled with roasted duck and mushrooms) becomes a battlefield of spoons. The owners, Tanner Fahl and Natalie Graham, grew up in Hawaii and are part Japanese. In Hawaiian, the word for mixed ancestry is hapa - a fitting description for SakaMai, as a Japanese restaurant filtered through an American consciousness, respectful of tradition but not bound by it. The chef, Takanori Akiyama, is a native of Japan who has long incorporated Western elements in his cooking, at Lan and Dieci in the East Village. Here he makes croquettes with lobster and lardo from Spanish pata negra pigs, béchamel and sweet Saikyo miso. They are coated in panko and deep-fried, then presented as a set of three petite orbs on a froth of lobster bisque. You have a few seconds to note their finer details before they disappear. "Southern" fried chicken turns out to be a recipe from Miyazaki, Mr. Akiyama's hometown on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's main islands. After being slow-cooked and then deep-fried, the chicken is dunked in a mixture of soy, sugar, chile and rice vinegar, and nearly submerged in a paprika-spiked tartar sauce. Crunch is sacrificed for creaminess and sweet heat. It is a fair exchange. Occasionally the food loses focus. One evening, shishito-pepper tempura was balanced at first bite, blisteringly salty thereafter. Roasted duck breast and leg confit with a huddle of potatoes, brussels sprouts and asparagus, while respectably executed, seemed to have little in common with the dishes that had come before. SakaMai is less rarefied than Yopparai to the east; quirkier and more personal than Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya to the north. It is an inclusive place, gentle on neophytes. The décor is understated: sheer white curtains, votives, eroded brick. Tucked in the back is a semisecret den, complete with a fireplace and a kilim. The sake list, put together by Yasu Suzuki (formerly at 15 East and Brushstroke) and George Kao, is smart without being too scholarly. This makes a good counterpoint to the esoteric cocktails, created by Shingo Gokan (of the speakeasy Angel's Share) and featuring ingredients like wasanbon, a Japanese sugar kneaded by hand, and the scent of scorched cloves and cinnamon, which is trapped in a snifter and released at the table, like a visitation from a goth boyfriend clutching black cigarettes. The meal could end, rather starkly, with a white chocolate mousse laced with bitter sake lees. Better to let your last taste of the night be of the extraordinary Uonuma Koshihikari rice, interleaved with Tasmanian sea trout and wild mushrooms. The rice is harvested in Japan's remote, mountainous snow country, famed for the purity of its water, and steamed in a handmade double-lidded donabe pot. The back story matters. SakaMai 157 Ludlow Street (Stanton Street), (646) 590-0684, sakamai.com. RECOMMENDED Egg on egg on egg; skate wing; chawan mushi; renkon chips; lobster croquette; Tasmanian ocean trout and mushroom rice pot. OPEN Monday to Saturday for dinner. WHEELCHAIR ACCESS Dining room a step up from the sidewalk; restroom is spacious and has handrail.