The Kitchen
Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.
9 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks
You go to an izakaya to drink. The food exists to keep you drinking. Sit down and an otoshi arrives unasked — a small dish nobody ordered, 300 to 600 yen a head, and that is the cover charge. Order in waves: something cold first, skewers as they come off the charcoal, fried things later. Under the Yurakucho tracks it is the same food standing up, on paper plates, with a train overhead every ninety seconds. Nobody orders otsumami without a drink already in hand.
串カツ / kushikatsu · Tokyo
Pork and onion on short bamboo skewers, breaded in fine panko, dropped in oil, dragged through a communal vat of thin brown sauce. The vat is shared. You dip once. Break that rule and the whole counter turns around.
Where you'd actually eat it: Osaka's format, imported whole, sauce vat and all. In Tokyo it is the standing counters under the tracks at Shinbashi and Ueno. Large draft first, shochu highball once the sauce has done its work.
From behind the bar: Fine panko sticks better and fries faster. Add skewers one at a time so the oil never drops below 330F/165C.
ホルモン焼き / horumon-yaki · Tokyo
Beef small intestine over fire. It renders, it flares, it goes chewy and then crisp. Cheap protein that fed the postwar years and now feeds men in suits at 11pm under the railway arches.
Where you'd actually eat it: Ameyoko and the arches around Ueno, or the sidewalk grills in Tsukishima. Smoke thick enough to ruin a jacket. Drunk with Hoppy, the shochu and the near-beer refilled separately.
From behind the bar: Buy intestine already cleaned and frozen from a Korean grocery. Uncleaned is a two-hour job and your kitchen will smell for a day.
シロ / shiro (もつ焼き) · Tokyo
Pig large intestine, boiled soft, skewered, grilled until the fat blisters. The spine of north Tokyo drinking. Order it shio if you want to taste it, tare if you just want to keep drinking.
Where you'd actually eat it: Kita-Senju, Akabane, Tateishi. Plastic stools on the sidewalk from 4pm, smoke in the street. Hoppy or a lemon sour, and the pile of empty skewers is your bill.
From behind the bar: Boil the intestine a day ahead and chill it in its own liquid. It firms up overnight and skewers cleanly instead of tearing.
ねぎま (negima) · Tokyo
The default skewer. Thigh and thick scallion, alternating, glazed in tare until the edges catch. Two per person is nothing. Six is a start.
Where you'd actually eat it: Yurakucho gado-shita, elbow to elbow under the Yamanote tracks, with a large draft Sapporo you did not have to specify.
From behind the bar: Order the shio version too — same skewer, salt only, no tare. Good yakitori-ya want you to taste the bird before you taste the sauce.
つくね (tsukune) · Tokyo
Ground chicken pressed onto a skewer, glazed dark, served with a raw yolk to drag it through. The yolk is the point. Skip it and you have a meatball.
Where you'd actually eat it: Any yakitori counter in Shinbashi after the second beer, when someone at the table starts ordering for everybody.
From behind the bar: Use pasteurized eggs for the yolk. Japanese table eggs are graded and handled for raw eating; most American supermarket eggs are not.
鶏皮 (torikawa) · Tokyo
Chicken skin, threaded like a concertina and grilled until it stops being fat and starts being glass. Salt only. The cheapest thing on the board and often the best.
Where you'd actually eat it: A standing counter in Yurakucho where the grill is at the window and the smoke is the advertisement. Drink a highball, not beer.
From behind the bar: Ask your butcher for skin — it is usually free or close to it. Save the rendered fat for fried rice.
レバー (reba) · Tokyo
Liver, glazed in sweet tare, cooked to just firm. Iron and sugar. It divides a table, and the people who like it order three.
Where you'd actually eat it: A yakitori-ya in Shinbashi with plastic sheeting for walls, where the tare bucket is older than the staff. Pork liver is the motsuyaki shop next door.
From behind the bar: If the liver looks gray-brown and dry in the case, do not buy it. Fresh liver is glossy and deep red-brown.
焼きとん かしら (yakiton kashira) · Tokyo
Pork cheek on a stick with a smear of hot mustard. Yakiton is what Tokyo actually eats — it came out of the postwar black markets and never left the tracks.
Where you'd actually eat it: Shinbashi or Yurakucho, standing, a couple of hundred yen a skewer, with a lemon sour in a frosted mug.
From behind the bar: Jowl is at Mexican and Asian butchers as cachete or buta kashira. Shoulder works but loses the collagen chew that makes the cut.
銀杏 (ginnan) · Tokyo
Jade-green nuts, roasted until translucent, salted, five to a skewer. Bitter, faintly sweet, slightly sticky. An autumn thing, and the most adult snack on the board.
Where you'd actually eat it: A yakitori counter in October when the ginkgo trees along the avenues drop and the whole city smells faintly of it. Hot sake.
From behind the bar: Ginkgo nuts contain ginkgotoxin. Adults should stop at about 10 in a sitting; do not serve them to children at all. This is a real limit, not a superstition.