Manischewitz and bubbly is the drink at hand, blushing darkly in a flute glass with a jag of lemon peel. It is a play on a kir royale, with the syrupy Sabbath dinner wine subbing for crème de cassis. It could be a gimmick, but it works: the sparkler, Palmer Brut from Long Island, is fruity and expansive, smoothing over Manischewitz’s neurotic sweetness.

Still, wait for the ba-dum-bump. The cocktail’s name, Oy Vey Iz Kir, tweaks the Yiddish lament “oy vey iz mir”: woe is me.

Shalom Japan, which opened in August on a less gentrified corner of South Williamsburg, due east of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, is a serious restaurant that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Start with its unlikely name, which makes a merry hash of the cultural heritages of the owners and chefs, Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi, who married in May.

(The newlyweds didn’t invent the name. It is borrowed from a glatt kosher supper club in SoHo in the 1980s serving cholent alongside sashimi and comic patter from the mistress of the house, a Japanese native raised as a Jew, whose trademark punch line was “Not funny? So sorry.”)