Lunchtime sushi and salad at Haru

Last Tuesday, I had the privilege of going out to lunch with a group of colleagues and the partner on my case at work. We headed to one of my office's go-to lunch places, Haru, for some sushi.

Haru in Times Square is hip and noisy. It's decked out and wood and bamboo, but the clubby atmosphere can't hide the fact that the servers are a little bit abrupt. No matter-- the food is always reliable and, more importantly, reliably good.

We started with a few orders of edamame for the table. It was well done, but it needed more chunky salt.

Classic.

As even vegetarian sushi doesn't always, ahem, agree with me, I ordered two salads. They brought out the seaweed salad first, which is a very good rendition of the classic, accompanied by veggies cut into playful strings. It's fun to eat and brings you back to when you were five years old and your mom cut vegetables into fun shapes to get you to eat them. Not that my mom ever did that.

Gotta love the bizarre tomato garnish

My colleague JW started with the miso soup. It looked... like miso soup.

Sure.

Then the entrees came around. SM had ordered what looked like chicken katsu. It was beautiful, actually, and he polished it off, which indicates it must have been good.

Look at that sauce swirling!

JW ordered a bento box with chicken, tempura vegetables, rice, and a California roll. He let me have his broccoli, which came with some teriyaki sauce on top. Yum.

So orderly. And delicious.

I followed up my seaweed salad with a regular mixed greens salad with ginger dressing. I asked for the dressing on the side, which I shouldn't have, because the whole point of salads at Japanese restaurants is the ginger dressing. The salad was pretty much just leaves and dressing. But, you know, it was what it purported to be, so that's good.

The lettuce didn't look so wilted in person, I promise.

The other members of our party-- WM, SG, and DC-- all ordered sushi. DC, our partner, had an order down pat-- apparently he's a Haru expert-- and others dabbled in various fish-based delicacies. They all enjoyed the sushi, which is good. I can't say too much more than that.

Looks like a slightly spicy roll

Gold leaf. GOLD LEAF.

A beautiful tableau, with little unagi torpedoes

Our lunch was delicious and very enjoyable. We do a lot of takeout from Haru at our office, and their takeout is always good as well. The dine-in experience is a little loud-- definitely not a romantic destination-- but for good sushi (or, um, salads), you can't go wrong at Haru. It's a solid three-spatula Japanese joint.

Haru
205 W. 43rd Street, at 7th Avenue
212-398-9810