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Toribayashi is a restaurant I’ve visited every season since the start of this year, and my fondness for it has climbed fast. By the most recent visit, the chef’s execution had entered a new phase — even in summer, when chicken fat runs thin, he still found his own way to grill the wings crisp-skinned and tender, gave the neck and the lean meat each their own distinct aroma; even a single piece of Aomori daikon managed to lodge itself in memory, sweet and juicy.

This level of execution comes close to the best yakitori of my life.

The shop only moved to Azabu-juban and renamed itself Toribayashi last year. Its Tabelog score has already climbed to 4.17. How to put that number in context? Tokyo’s Torishiki currently sits at 4.43, while Minami-Aoyama Shichitorime — a multi-year Bronze Award winner — sits at 4.19.

Catching up to Shichitorime’s level within a single year of opening is a frankly alarming pace.

Chef Hayashi likes to joke that he’s “chicken-royalty-bred” — a self-deprecating reference to his start at a yakitori chain. As a student he worked part-time at a yakitori chain, later went to study service at French and Italian restaurants, worked as a sommelier at a wine bar, and then ran “Yakitori Akane” in Kagurazaka for nine years. At the new shop, he takes the grill himself while his wife, from Kagoshima, looks after the floor — both the shochu and wine lists hold their own. Against Tokyo’s habit of marking up drinks lists by 2-3x, this place’s list manages to land partly in line with WS average pricing.

All of this experience shows up in the food. His yakitori and grilling style don’t really read as belonging to any single Tokyo lineage.

He alternates between charcoal and firewood — charcoal to hold the doneness, firewood to add a bit of aroma — and tucks things like mustard leaf, okra, and Kagura nanban chili into the skewers. The chicken is tender where it should be, crisp where it should be; the same cut, skewered a different way, keeps producing unexpected textures and flavors — there’s always something new every visit.

Summer opened with a refreshing bowl of kiwi and junsai; by autumn it had already switched to a 🎃 pumpkin cake — sweet with a hint of salt, soft and fine, the pumpkin’s aroma carrying a strong sense of autumn.

A comparison of two skin-on chicken breasts: Tankai jidori has now been swapped for Kuroiwa jidori and guinea fowl. The Kuroiwa jidori’s center still shows a faint translucence, the meat noticeably firmer. The guinea fowl leans slightly pink, eating more tender. The fat along the skin’s edge, refusing to render out entirely, made the difference between the two aromas even clearer.

Fig and lily bulb was also a brand-new starter.

Surprisingly, the “lily bulb” was actually made from taro — rich and milky to eat, with the fig unexpectedly taking on the role of the high-acid element.

An unexpected pairing, a small but real surprise.

The yakitori came out swinging from the first skewer.

Chicken breast rolled around salt-cured mustard leaf, grilled pale and very tender — only at the center did the mustard’s aroma slowly emerge. It avoided wasabi’s nose-piercing edge entirely, leaving only that pure, refreshing quality — genuinely excellent.

The chicken wing, golden meat next to blush-pink meat, looked irresistible on its own, and it even came tucked with a bit of red yuzu. Crisp skin, tender meat, plenty of fat — yet never once felt greasy. After the yuzu fragrance faded, a faintly charred, fatty note from the wing skin lingered in the mouth.

I really wanted another skewer 🤤.

The skirt (hanging tender) skewer, surprisingly, came paired with okra.

“The three pieces each have a different texture.”

A key piece of information, delivered by the chef a second before the skewer went into my mouth.

From the faint fattiness of the first bite to the increasingly firm texture of the skirt meat further along, the okra added juiciness to the skewer, making the dense meatiness that much more interesting.

Genuinely a standout, beyond what you’d expect from an ordinary skirt skewer.

Midway through came a plate of “fried balls” — satsuma-age, a specialty from the chef’s wife’s hometown of Kagoshima.

One, scented with scallion, sweet and tender, deeply juicy.

The other, stuffed with cheese and dusted with cumin, its aroma bold and uncompromising.

Both impossible to choose between — I loved them equally.

The turnip, which had been on the grill since the meal began, finally arrived at the table.

The charred, blackened outer layer had already been peeled away, leaving behind juicy, tender radish flesh — sweet and soft, with a trace of charcoal aroma at the edges. The leaves alongside weren’t just for decoration either — crisp and crunchy to eat, with an unexpectedly fresh quality.

It left the whole palate feeling refreshed.

The lean meat (akami) was genuinely a bit of a surprise — complex in texture, yet clean and singular in flavor.

Two layers of chicken, inner and outer, stacked together — the outer layer crisp with a touch of moisture, the inner layer firmer and more chewy. The textures crossed back and forth, but the meaty aroma stayed pure and direct — I loved it.

A handful of black pepper leaf (kuromoji) thrown onto the fire, its aroma carried straight into the duck.

The meat itself was firm, a clear woody note wrapping around the red meat; as I chewed, the duck’s aroma kept growing clearer.

I really love the way his grilling method preserves that meaty quality you taste while chewing.

A green pepper, halved, was set down in front of me.

“This one I actually learned from Torikizoku (laughs).”

The chef took a self-deprecating jab at himself, then handed over a genuinely surprising answer.

The pepper’s shell was soft enough to melt, the meatball inside delicate and juicy, the sauce carrying both aroma and acidity.

As the mid-autumn festival approached, Japan’s fast-food chains all rolled out their “tsukimi” (moon-viewing) sets.

I didn’t expect the chef to have his own “tsukimi dish” too.

Egg yolk and grated daikon, disguised as a 🍳 sunny-side-up egg, sat on top of grilled wing tips and drumettes. The daikon’s freshness, the yolk’s richness, the skin’s faint crispness, the meat’s firmness — and even a bit of small cartilage dancing between the teeth!

Perfect for drinking with.

A piece of tofu skin quietly wrapped around garland chrysanthemum caught the eye.

The chicken neck that followed went back to something purely, cleanly meaty — crisp skin, tender meat, seasoned with nothing but salt, clean and precise.

The fiercely grilled chicken heart looked noticeably “bigger than usual” — turned out, I was told, it included the whole heart along with its outer membrane.

The bite had real layers: the aroma clinging to the outer surface first, then the gelatinous skin giving way to bursting fat, and finally, at the very center, a faint crispness. A bomb — but one that bursts into beautiful fireworks on the tongue.

If there were no extra orders, the last grilled item before the staples would be the mushroom stuffed with meat.

Who would have guessed he tucked a hint of blue cheese inside!

The mushroom was crisp, the minced meat tender, and the blue cheese’s faint funk and slight astringency turned round and mellow the instant it met the egg yolk. Two assertive flavors conspiring together here, and somehow, genuinely delicious.

It closed, as always, with the mango-and-soft-yolk mousse I love every single time.

A genuinely, excessively satisfying meal.

The first time I went, in spring, I only thought Toribayashi stood a notch above typical yakitori shops. By early summer, when the chicken was at its leanest, it still delivered a fully satisfying set through its command of heat, texture, and the vegetables woven throughout.

And on the most recent visit, I was completely won over — a run of pure-meat bombs from the skirt, the neck, and the heart, paired with surprising combinations like chicken breast wrapped in mustard leaf, the wing stuffed with red yuzu, and the tsukimi wing-tip dish.

The drinks list deserves a mention too. Beyond an inexhaustible supply of limited-edition shochu from Kagoshima you won’t find elsewhere, the wine list is also unexpectedly refined and excellent value — you can even dig up champagne priced in line with WS averages.

A genuinely hard restaurant not to love.

I can’t wait to come back every season, indefinitely.

Toribayashi

Monday – Saturday 17:00 / 20:00 seating only

Omakase Course ¥13,000 (tax included; plus 10% service charge; price varies with seasonal ingredients)

Mesebaba is a Tokyo Italian restaurant that’s been famous for being nearly impossible to book for ten years, averaging ¥70,000 per person — roughly 3,000 RMB.

But it also proved that a restaurant’s ‘difficulty to book’ + ‘price’ and ‘actual flavor’ really do need to be counted separately.

I found an emoji that perfectly describes this meal’s experience — 📉.

Obviously, a single visit can’t represent a restaurant’s full ability. Consider this post a reality check for everyone — whether you still want to go after reading is entirely up to you.

Chef Dai Takayama is from Miyagi. He worked at Vicoletto in Okusawa, Tokyo, then trained in Italy’s Friuli and Tuscany regions, opening mesebaba in Kameido in 2013, then relocating to Aoyama in 2023. During the Kameido years, it was already notorious among food lovers for being nearly impossible to book, with media even calling it a ‘dream Italian restaurant.’

Takayama had already outgrown the idea of only making Italian food. Back in 2022, he was planning to step outside that category and try his own ‘Takayama cuisine.’ The relocated space is run by just two people, aiming to make dining out feel closer to eating at home. He later won the 2024 OCEANS Award — a prize built around lifestyle and well-being.

Reading between the lines: the chef had had enough and wanted to open his own high-priced private dinner party.

The pedigree here is genuinely solid. And for the first half of the meal that night, it really was delicious — sturdy ingredients, handled simply and properly.

Things opened with an Aomori corn soup, made from this year’s final batch of Aomori corn.

Ice-cold, with a slight graininess on entry. A faint saltiness leads the charge, followed by umami and sweetness surging together — high in sweetness yet natural, with the corn’s own flavor genuinely beautiful.

Next, bonito with olive oil. Barely any cooking process to speak of, but you could tell it was a good piece of fish — the flesh catching the light, the texture soft, the fat aroma full, with both sweetness and freshness coming through directly.

Large pieces of Hokkaido sea urchin on crisp bread — again, purely delicious. The urchin sweet, the olive oil fragrant, the bread underneath crisp to bite into. Who wouldn’t love this kind of crowd-pleaser.

Fried conger eel arrived with an aroma that was genuinely tempting.

The shell was thicker than expected, needing a couple of chews before the fragrance followed. Inside, the fish’s own fat held up against that shell, and eating it carried the satisfaction of good fried food, with the thickness of the flesh and the crisp shell striking a real balance. The heat control and restraint here were genuinely well done.

Up to this point, it was delicious.

Next came roe-bearing ayu, and alongside a heavy hand of olive oil, the salt level climbed too.

The saltiness took over both the head and tail, with only the belly section still holding onto its own flavor. The olive oil fragrance was strong, and the fish’s own fat aroma wasn’t weak either. Crisp where it should be crisp, tender once you got inside, moving slowly from the ayu’s bitterness through to the richness of its fat.

At least it wasn’t a total wipeout — the belly was delicious.

At this point, another group of guests arrived at the restaurant, and from here, the whole meal’s quality started its 📉-style decline.

The matsutake from Kokura in Kyushu looked promising given its size. In practice, though, it tasted ordinary, even a little musty due to the fiber and freshness. On top of that, the outer layer was thick and the salt heavy — whatever matsutake should taste like was essentially gone.

The previous dish, the conger eel, was also fried, with heat control and seasoning both well balanced. By the time the matsutake arrived, half a piece in and your mouth was already coated in oil, interest completely gone.

It was the gnocchi that pulled the whole meal’s falling curve back up just a little.

Akaushi beef with black-truffle potato dumplings — the dumplings weren’t small, yet extremely soft. Pillowy going down, never heavy either. What was genuinely interesting was the occasional whole peppercorn you’d bite into, a faint spiciness suddenly surfacing, lifting the aroma, cutting the richness, and adding points.

The gnocchi itself, taken alone, was genuinely impressive — but looking at the dish as a whole, the black truffle on top had essentially zero presence in terms of aroma, and with the peppercorns’ aggressive flavor on top of that, the truffle might as well not have been there at all.

The lemon ricotta pasta collapsed pretty much completely.

The lemon’s acidity and the spice rushed up together, with a thick layer of cheese that failed to smooth the transition between them at all. And it was that particularly harsh kind of spice with zero aroma.

It tasted exactly like a convenience-store lemon-salt mixed noodle dish ⬇️.

😁

The main course, beef tongue with a red wine sauce, was genuinely deflating from start to finish.

The beef tongue was the fattier kind, the sauce thick, the salt level high too. The meat’s fat and the heavy sauce piled together until, by the end, all you could taste was richness and salt, with almost nothing else distinguishable.

There was even a bit of a Saizeriya-style fast-food feel to it, like a heavy-sauce rice bowl. You had to scrape off the thick layer of sauce with your fork, and wash it down with a glass of wine, just to force the bite down.

Whatever happiness that first half’s good ingredients and precise cooking had built up was completely overturned at this point.

A pudding closed out the meal.

The puddings at our table varied noticeably in both caramel color and thickness. Of course, you can’t judge flavor by color alone, but having actually eaten it, it was just a very ordinary way to finish.

All I can say is, well, that’s that.

The first few courses really were: good ingredients, olive oil used well. The fish’s fat, the urchin’s sweetness, the corn’s — all of it genuinely made you happy to eat. And then the second half, aside from the gnocchi briefly pulling things back a little, ran into one problem after another: lacking aroma, over-seasoned, oversalted sauces. The gap between the first half and the second was genuinely quite large.

Being hard to book will of course build anticipation, but this meal’s disappointment isn’t entirely a matter of expectations being set too high.

Reflecting on it with a friend afterward, we wondered whether, as more guests arrived at the counter in the second half, the restaurant’s own operational capacity simply couldn’t keep up once things got busy. That’s purely our guess from that night as to what caused the quality control to come apart. But regardless, at this price point, whether the restaurant is busy or not shouldn’t be something the guest’s own experience has to pay for.

Tokyo has so many great Italian restaurants — better to save your appetite for food that genuinely makes you happy.

👉 nacol, Sanwa, the 🇮🇹 Italian collection, 🍕38th, the Cignale group, fileja — all of them beat this one.

mesebaba メゼババ

Omakase Menu 70,000+

In a Tokyo overflowing with Italian restaurants, fileja genuinely stands out as understated and distinctive — and more importantly, unexpectedly delicious.

The tiny counter is, at a glance, nothing but pasta-rolling equipment — no expensive ingredients holding up the show, and the price is a tenth of those top-tier names in Minato. The menu is a single handwritten sheet: Tortelli, Gnocchi, Bigoli, Quadretti, Chitarrina — a dozen-plus pastas run through the whole course, from cold starters to dessert…

As an adult, you don’t get to choose — one meal, and you get to try all of it.

The entire kitchen is run by a single chef, Shoichi Jitsuyama, who trained at Torucchio, a restaurant known for handmade pasta.

Everything is made to order, brought to the table on custom little plates. Rolling the dough, shaping it, boiling, reducing the sauce, braising the meat, plating — each dish handled with such methodical precision. Across a dozen-plus courses, the presentation and the satisfaction in your mouth stay perfectly linked, the rhythm and the rise and fall of flavor exactly calibrated.

Plenty of variety is fun on its own, but the real skill here is that the seasoning stays restrained throughout.

Salt, acid, meat juice, cream, seafood umami — almost every plate strikes a comfortable balance while still being distinctly different from the last. You can’t help but gasp at the next course, ‘wait, how is this one so good too?’

The first glass of sparkling wine wasn’t even finished when the freshly shaped potato Tortelli arrived. The skin is thin, the mashed potato inside fragrant, the salt level exactly right, with a warm, broth-like umami underneath.

Next, a homestyle but genuinely delicious tuna bread salad — the moist bread soaking up tomato and bell pepper juices, the olives bringing a touch of salty umami, the tuna just simple canned stuff, but handled cleanly.

Salmon with polenta is also a small, restrained bite. The polenta breaks apart on entry almost like fine sand, faintly sweet, clinging to the salmon’s richness.

No attempt at showing off whatsoever, yet it left us genuinely happy.

This plain-looking squid-ink gnocchi. Honestly — ugh… so good 🥺

The gnocchi was somehow cooked impossibly soft, almost with the chew of mochi, carrying a faint sweetness of its own. Coated outside in a squid-ink sauce that’s clearly salty-savory, the umami hits first, and only after you swallow does it let the sweetness release.

Chewy, savory, salty, sweet — all mixed together. It completely broke every expectation I had for pasta, and it’s genuinely hard not to love.

Conch short pasta, the sauce carrying a clear seafood stock and butter quality, with enough freshness and enough body. The short pasta itself has a bit of bite, just enough to hold onto that thick layer of sauce.

The whole mood shifts — from that soft, chewy character just a moment ago, suddenly standing up straight.

Then came shrimp meatballs with eggplant — from the grainy, springy-tender texture down to the soft eggplant cushioning it underneath, the textures weave together naturally, and the shrimp’s sweetness holds its own too. Delicious.

At this point the chef came around behind everyone, found a clear spot on the counter, and pulled out a Torchio per bigoli — a hand-cranked spiral pasta press — and started rolling pasta right there on the spot, even inviting guests to join in.

The thick noodle itself has a strong presence, soft yet springy, holding onto the sauce well. The seafood sauce’s savory pull is seductive, but my favorite part was that fine, sandy texture almost like salted egg yolk, plus the tomato fragrance hidden inside that only reveals itself at the very end.

Just two bites, and already a little wistful it was over.

The eggplant salad cleanses the palate, then a small but genuinely ‘serious’ bite arrives.

A rush of yuzu fragrance contrasts sharply with the substantial braised beef. The beef is braised soft, keeping a bit of resistance when you bite into it, while the taro holds a beautiful shape yet melts easily in the mouth.

One of the few dishes that isn’t pasta, and it’s simple and delicious too.

Right after scraping the last of the beef sauce off the bottom of the plate, I looked up to see the chef pull out a pasta cutting wheel and start working on the next round of dough.

Quadretti came with a slow-braised pork ragù, the sauce genuinely pure, the pasta cooked exactly right. Halfway through, folding in ricotta suddenly gave the sauce a delicate quality, and what had been a thick tomato-and-meat richness turned light in an instant.

Two states within the same plate, light first, then rich — this kind of small shift is genuinely charming.

Chitarrina with chicken ragù, piled generously with truffle — the kind of aroma bomb nobody can resist.

Don’t let the fact that this meal has no particularly extravagant ingredients fool you — the truffle used here wasn’t chosen carelessly, its aroma hitting you clearly and directly. The cream underneath was controlled to exactly the right richness, fragrant without ever tipping into heaviness.

It’s the kind of delicious that doesn’t need much explaining 😋

It’s not just the pasta — fileja’s risotto is also genuinely excellent. The current version uses porcini mushrooms, paired with slow-braised wagyu cheek.

Still keeping that understated look, but the flavor is shockingly good. The porcini keeps a slight crunch, with plenty of mushroom character, and the salt level precisely sets off the aroma. The wagyu cheek is beautifully tender and rich, and the sauce over it pulls the aroma up yet another level.

‘You have to eat it one bite of rice, one bite of meat, together.’

Hard to even describe — absolutely incredible 💥

The final course of the meal — our ninth pasta/rice course of the day — was a smoked cheese short pasta.

Understated plus one, but with no shortage of little clever touches. The sauce clings tightly to the slightly al dente pasta, the smoked cheese already fragrant on its own, with a bit of bonito flakes mixed in to open up another layer of savory depth.

Dessert turned out to be caramelized little dumplings made from pasta dough?!

The tea-scented ice cream was made especially silky, wrapped around the hot little dumplings — sweet with a touch of salt, and a slight chewy stickiness, tasting remarkably like a rich cup of milk tea.

Ohh, a perfectly calibrated kind of satisfaction.

Genuinely the kind of place where you finish the meal already looking forward to coming back when the menu changes in two months.

Ten pastas, each one distinguished from the last purely through shape, texture, water content, and sauce thickness, and even by the final dessert, you’re still enjoying yourself happily, without ever feeling weighed down.

Two and a half hours felt like watching the chef play through a game — the plot had its ups and downs, the visuals kept shifting, and as a spectator, all you had to do was enjoy it.

At the same time, he showed me another side of Japanese-Italian cuisine. Without leaning heavily on Japanese ingredients or emphasizing Italian tradition, he used pasta as a vehicle to build a course that still fits within a Japanese culinary framework. So many of the flavors in his cooking, I’d never tasted anywhere else — genuinely eye-opening.

Compared to other pasta places in Tokyo, it’s a bit more relaxed than PrimoPasso, more pasta-focused than the Cignale group, and more refined than a family-style spot like Emilia. Booking is relatively easy — you can even get a seat with just two days’ notice — and the value for money is excellent.

Found a gem~ Looking forward to November.

fileja

Lunch 12:00 –

Dinner 19:00 –

Omakase Course ¥13,500 ++

Atami — the only wood-fired hamburger omakase in the entire world. Also one of the restaurants in all of Japan that takes the business of making a hamburger most seriously.

Lunch only, a six-course menu, eight seats, a year-long waitlist. It’s a Tabelog Hamburger Top 100 pick, and many food lovers call it Tokyo’s best burger.

The counter itself is appetite-inducing. The wood-fire grill sits further back, with the cooking process visible up close — everyone’s attention pulled into this semicircular counter.

A full 175 grams of patty starts as a raw ball of meat, slowly tightening and coloring as it moves between near and far heat, finishing a deep brown. Fat keeps dripping down, and the moment it hits the coals, sparks and aroma shoot up together.

The entire grilling sequence alone was enough to build serious anticipation.

Before the main event, there were some fairly substantial starters to take the edge off.

Corn, inescapable at summer’s end, grilled over the wood fire and blended into a soup. The freshness was striking, and the wood-smoke aroma was disorienting enough that you could taste something almost meaty in it, with the sweetness only slowly seeping through in the aftertaste.

It’s corn soup, yet it drinks with a surprisingly substantial savoriness — a genuinely nice surprise to open with.

Fresh sardine paired with a smoked bell pepper sauce, styled like a tapas — a familiar pairing given a distinctly Japanese seafood character. The moist pepper sauce clearly steals the show, faintly sweet and faintly spicy, with scallion lifting the aroma at the end — the fish itself came through a bit weaker than expected.

Snow-aged potato tempura stands in for fries — fried genuinely crisp, with a delicate interior. Frozen watermelon and basil granita handled the palate-cleansing role.

The main event hadn’t even arrived yet, and we were already half full.

At this point, the patty finally came together as a full hamburger in front of us.

100% Kuroge Wagyu, paired with a bun that’s soaked up plenty of charcoal aroma. It looks substantial, but eating it turned out to feel surprisingly less heavy than expected.

The patty, surprisingly, has an airy quality, packed with juice, and the aroma of charcoal and wood smoke has worked its way straight into every gap in the meat. A sweet-and-sour sauce catches the juices, delivering a direct, satisfying bite without ever feeling one-note.

The bun’s crust is a touch dry and firm the moment you bite in, but thankfully the inside stays soft. As the meat juice and sweet-sour sauce slowly soak in, it actually gets easier and easier to eat.

Overall, this is a combination with an extremely high satisfaction level. A hamburger is, at its core, the most direct form of street food, and this one keeps all of that — the pleasure of biting into a mouthful of juicy meat — while handling the binchotan aroma and the fire itself beautifully.

Taking that most straightforward kind of pleasure and amplifying it by a whole level — this genuinely is a next-level hamburger.

Worth a dedicated trip just for the burger — though I do hope the restaurant polishes up a few of the starters a little more…

atami

Lunch Only 11:00 –

Hamburger Omakase Course ¥7,800+

Never expected that in Tokyo, an ‘ordinary’ sushi restaurant you can book just a few days ahead would deliver the joy of chasing fish straight from the sea.

‘The red seabream was caught this morning and flown straight here.’ ‘The ghost flathead too, caught this morning.’ ‘My fish never passes through Toyosu — it comes straight from the source.’ ‘I get my fish before xx and xx (two gold-tier sushi restaurants in Tokyo) do.’

The chef says each line like it’s nothing, but there’s a bit of quiet pride underneath.

From Akashi and Awaji Island all the way to Ainan and Amakusa, the fish comes from Japan’s top suppliers — Tsuruichi, Hasegawa, Fujimoto, Mura, Yamazaki. For anyone who loves fish, this meal is genuinely satisfying.

Chef Yosuke Nishioka’s own path was unconventional too. He fell in love with fishing as a child, yet his first career was in construction. Later, wanting to work with fish, he moved into washoku, then into sushi. His training period wasn’t especially long — he went independent at 25, opening ‘Kyodo Nishioka’ in Setagaya. In 2023, after relocating to Takanawa, it was renamed to today’s ‘Sushi Nishioka.’

His style stands out as unusually sharp-edged in a city as expensive as Tokyo. He takes only six seats a day, and his set menu is priced even lower than sushi restaurants in Beijing or Shanghai.

He doesn’t lean on lineage, doesn’t rely on aging, and doesn’t play with complex seasoning. But the chef is personally friends with fishermen at local ports, built entirely around one idea: catch the fish in the morning, process it, and fly it straight to the restaurant.

Tokyo certainly doesn’t lack good sushi, but to eat a meal this satisfying, with fish that outclasses gold-tier restaurants, Nishioka genuinely offers something one-of-a-kind — the kind of experience that makes you want to come back again and again.

Just the first two sakana courses alone were already substantial.

The red seabream, caught early that morning, came as three large pieces combining skin, collar meat, belly, and back. Set against a fish-bone broth, the first bite rushes with freshness, followed by a structured, lingering sweetness. The flesh has strong spring and plenty of moisture, and layered with a small piece of skin, the contrast in texture comes through even more clearly.

Next came the ghost flathead, flown in from Akashi that same morning.

A small bowl, generously filled, the fish covered in its own skin and various organs. Each bite, lightly rolled in fish flesh, held a surprise. The flesh was moist and crisp, the skin even more refreshing, and by the time you reached the organs — especially the soft, rich liver — the springiness between your teeth suddenly gathered itself together.

‘The octopus was just boiled in the seawater it arrived in.’ A few segments of one leg revealed completely different textures — add a touch of wasabi, and the octopus’s own faint fragrance starts to emerge, and the more you chew, there’s even a hint of milkiness.

Genuinely a bit of showing off, wrapped in genuine resourcefulness.

The bean clam soup reduces form entirely into broth — a stock made from nothing but bean clams and water, pure, with a sweetness that keeps rising to the surface, giving it a genuinely elevated quality.

Next, kijihata — a type of grouper — with just a touch of scallion and shiso sprout. The flesh is sweet and crisp, clean and direct on the bite, a beautiful kind of purity.

The false bonito took on an entirely different character, cooked through and topped with a rich-looking sauce. On entry, the fat slowly melts, the broth’s umami concentrated, yet the seasoning holds back just enough that what lingers is still the fish’s own fragrance.

By the end of the sakana courses, Nishioka’s character was already clear. Great fish, light seasoning — maybe a touch understated, but solid and genuinely impossible to turn down.

In the nigiri section, it’s obvious the fish is the lead role, with the rice playing a supporting part.

The mottled flounder came topped with a small piece of its own fin frill, and within the soft, springy texture, a precise fish aroma slowly seeped through.

Squid is about as common as it gets at a Japanese sushi counter — even when quality is high, it usually needs tight, deliberate knife work to really shine, genuinely demanding on the chef. But Nishioka’s piece here, left uncut, was soft yet beautifully springy, with a sweetness that was surprisingly intense. The last time I had squid this good on its own merits was at a port on Sado Island.

Right after, a small piece of squid tentacle — crisp in a genuinely delightful way.

White-spotted emperor is a warm-current fish with extremely limited market supply — a rare guest outside its home region, and we got to have it too.

On entry, first a juicy crispness; then, as teeth meet the thick flesh, it slowly softens, releasing layer after layer of sweetness from the fat.

Oh! There’s even a hint of milkiness.

The biwa trout was also beautiful, full of fragrance, tender flesh, a clean bite. And Senzaki’s back-toro, part of the summer tuna lineup, was soft to the point of almost no resistance, with a faint seaweed aroma drifting up — an extremely distinctive expression.

The horse mackerel came as two beautiful pieces layered together, bold and generous. Both crispness and sweetness were lovely, the fragrance expressive, finishing quickly in the mouth — the seasoning was light, yet there wasn’t a trace of fishiness.

Two pieces of Spanish mackerel nigiri cleverly layered the back and belly together, extremely gently soft, the sweetness tightly concentrated, with a noticeable hint of milkiness too.

Nishioka clearly knows, inside and out, how to show guests at the counter the different kinds of ‘softness’ and ‘fresh sweetness’ across white-fleshed fish.

The hairtail was genuinely excellent.

Even the grilled state alone was mouthwatering — shaped into nigiri with a tiny sheet of nori tucked in the middle, giving the umami a three-dimensional quality while making the fish’s softness even more distinct. It nearly melts the moment it hits your mouth, yet carries a highly concentrated freshness, sweetness, and richness.

You need good fish, but you also need someone who can recognize it.

The meal closed with a bowl of Rishiri purple sea urchin — without the protection of alum, its appearance slightly messy, but the flavor showed a genuinely clean minerality and sweetness.

This meal was really a pure demonstration of ‘connections,’ ‘sourcing power,’ and ‘fish quality.’

A restaurant that can calmly and clearly tell you exactly which fisherman handled which fish, what time it was processed that morning, when it arrived at the restaurant today, and when it was prepared at the counter — that’s a genuinely distinct kind of charm.

It feels like, while other chefs are focused on winning over their guests, Nishioka is more focused on winning over the fish and the fish dealers at the ports. That kind of obsession with fish quality and freshness genuinely produces a stubborn, uniquely resourced sushi restaurant unlike any other in Tokyo.

If there’s one clear issue with this meal, it’s that the flavor profile runs a little uniform.

White-fleshed fish naturally carries a slow, drawn-out kind of freshness that needs to be savored patiently, and the seasoning here is very simple on top of that. After a dozen-plus fish in a row, it’s hard to land an explosive impact.

If you’re more used to the traditional Edomae style — constantly shifting between tsuke, jime, simmering, and searing — this meal might genuinely feel like it’s missing a bit of excitement.

But personally, I genuinely loved the dining experience at Nishioka. It’s rare to come across this many white-fleshed fish, all in such excellent condition, in one sitting in Tokyo — that kind of happiness saved me countless Shinkansen trips out to the ports myself.

Reservations currently only require 5-7 days’ notice.

If you’re a genuine fish lover, my advice: go now, while you can.

鮨 にし岡

Dinner 18:30 –

Sunday Lunch 12:30 –

Omakase Course ¥33,000++

During a previous trip to Tokyo, I was taken to a yakitori restaurant, ‘Yakitori Shinohara.’

The restaurant sits in Nishi-Azabu, an area packed with famous restaurants. It was Saturday night, and we’d booked the second seating at 8:30pm — arriving five minutes early, we already found more than ten people waiting outside. Business was clearly good — fully booked.

This restaurant is known for using a rare pathogen-free chicken — ‘Kyoto Koshihikari chicken.’ It’s the world’s only chicken breed that’s safe and pathogen-free enough to still meet raw-consumption standards even after a month of aging. Known for its buttery texture, it’s been described in write-ups as comparable to prime tuna belly.

Since Hideki Kosaka, the developer of Koshihikari chicken, only supplies it to chefs he trusts, it’s genuinely hard to come by, earning it the nickname ‘phantom chicken.’

The restaurant’s own website positions itself as yakitori kaiseki, set-menu style — mainly sashimi and yakitori grilled over Kishu binchotan charcoal, with various sakana dishes and a rice pot made from Koshihikari chicken woven throughout, priced at ¥16,000.

Adding the pairing — 7 different sakes — was also ¥16,000.

Kyoto Koshihikari chicken wonton soup

Shira-ae | Shine Muscat, blueberry

After being seated, a bowl of clear wonton soup arrived — chicken that’s great to eat isn’t necessarily great for stock, and the flavor here was quite thin, with the wonton wrapper on the thicker side.

But right after, a tiny portion of shira-ae was a pleasant surprise. The fruit’s clean sweetness was genuinely lovely, and the tofu’s milky, slightly sweet flavor combined with a slightly gauzy texture made for a bright, well-balanced whole.

Koshihikari chicken sashimi

The chicken sashimi platter included gizzard, liver, thigh, and breast. Never mind the latter two — this was genuinely the first time I’d seen raw-edible chicken offal.

The gizzard, though deep red, couldn’t hide its bright freshness at the edges — a genuinely memorable crunch. The liver was visibly rosy pink, cleanly prepared, and paired with sesame oil that amplified its delicate texture.

Both pieces of offal were genuinely memorable, and instantly proved the quality of the chicken.

The thigh meat was fairly standard, but the breast — which I’d expected to show more obvious muscle fiber — turned out surprisingly tight, with an almost cottony texture.

Minced chicken thigh, soy-cured ground cherry

A twist on the classic beef tartare pairing, with the egg yolk upgraded to a juicy ground cherry. But the promising-sounding combination didn’t leave much of an impression when eaten.

Yakitori | Shoulder

The yakitori started with chicken shoulder. The charcoal flavor and fat were beautifully balanced, the thin skin was perfectly crisp, and the meat’s juices burst in the mouth.

It instantly sparked a craving for good grilled food.

Two-year snow-aged potato

It had both a potato’s fluffy, starchy quality and a sweet potato’s faint sweetness, with a very subtle fermented tang lingering at the finish. A modest-looking little potato that was anything but ordinary.

Paired with a special Junmai from Hiryu-ki, which brought out some spice notes — genuinely interesting.

Chawanmushi

The eggs in the chawanmushi come from Tanaka Farm in Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tokyo — a concept not unlike ‘we use giant watermelons from a farm on the outskirts of the city.’

Worth mentioning here, though — chef Shinohara genuinely puts a lot of effort into personally visiting producers, checking the production and quality of ingredients himself.

He’s traveled to Hokkaido in search of quality cheese, and to Kajitani Farm in Hiroshima in search of quality herbs. By communicating directly with producers, he brings out the true character of each ingredient.

The chawanmushi’s surface, smooth and glossy, looked simple, clean, and genuinely inviting. Surprisingly, alongside the fragrant tenderness, there was also a faint milky flavor.

Scooping up the last spoonful revealed mozzarella hidden at the bottom of the bowl. A tiny bowl of chawanmushi, with a thoughtful touch in every bite.

Yakitori | Akami (lean thigh)

Yakitori | Chicken breast

Yakitori | Ground cherry (chochin)

After the chawanmushi, the yakitori course officially began.

Akami is the low-yield cut from the inner thigh, tighter in texture than the shoulder. The breast was rosy pink, paired with wasabi, wonderfully tender.

The chochin (ground cherry-style egg-topped skewer) was genuinely gorgeous — lightly cooked on the outside, with a perfectly gooey, rich, mellow center inside.

Yakitori | Chicken tail

Yakitori | Chicken heart

Yakitori | Gizzard

Three courses followed in quick succession — the tail was crisp in one bite, bursting with fatty aroma; the heart amplified the charcoal smokiness; and the gizzard was so crisp you could hear it crunch as you bit into it.

Shinohara’s use of salt on the yakitori was genuinely restrained — wasabi and grated ginger alternated to just barely set off the meat’s texture and flavor.

Chicken liver pâté, walnut bread

Tofu skin, blue cheese, honey

Chicken tataki

A few dishes were woven in between the yakitori courses.

The chicken liver pâté was maximally milky and delicate, with a faint sweetness lingering afterward. The grilled blue cheese, oozy at the center, paired with honey as expected — but the cheese’s quality dragged the whole dish down. The thigh-and-breast tataki, still slightly pink and raw in the middle, was extremely tender and great with drinks.

Chicken wings

I’d already thought using LV coasters at a small yakitori joint was a bit much, but then the server brought over a little LV box, containing black gloves meant for the next course — the chicken wings.

Though the sakana dishes were a bit uneven, Shinohara’s salt-grilled yakitori consistently delivered. The edges of the wing were lightly charred, the fat under the skin had rendered into a juicy richness, and the meat was cooked just right.

This was genuinely the dream chicken wing.

Spring roll

Tsukune (chicken meatball skewer)

The spring roll was a real letdown — after frying, it turned stiff, as if made with frozen wonton wrappers.

The chicken meatball, on the other hand, was a pleasant surprise — its round shape sitting cutely on the plate. Biting into the center, the meat was still faintly pink.

A touch of salt perfectly balanced the charcoal and the fat — genuinely satisfying.

Chicken cartilage

Esophagus

Neck meat

Since it’s not often we make it to this restaurant, we added three more cuts of yakitori — the esophagus had a wonderfully crisp texture.

While we were still working through the yakitori, the sous chef came out carrying a large clay pot, flashing his signature smile as he showed off tonight’s rice pot to the guests.

Rice pot (kamameshi)

Chicken broth noodles

Two staple courses followed — the rice pot combined chicken with in-season shishito peppers and butter-scented corn. Generous ingredients, but the flavor wasn’t especially compelling.

The chicken broth noodles, on the other hand, echoed the wonton soup from the start of the meal, with a thin layer of oil visible on top making it noticeably more fragrant. The noodles were cooked slightly underdone, and finishing the bowl left just the right amount of satisfaction.

Taken as a whole, the meal flowed smoothly.

You could see the chef’s skill and care in every dish, and the timing on the yakitori was consistently satisfying. Most of the counter seats seemed to be regulars, and the 7-bottle pairing was genuinely not skimped on — real value for money.

It’s still fairly easy to book right now — I’ll be thinking about coming back.

Yakitori Shinohara

〒106-0031 Nishi-Azabu Shino Building 1F, 1-4-40 Nishi-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo

17:30–20:00 / 20:30–23:00

www.yakitori-shinohara.com

Omakase ¥16,000

Pairing ¥16,000