Koujiya Yakiniku – Japanese Fast Food
Believe it or not, but Japanese is as famous for its fast food as is the USA. Sushi, poot noodles and gyudon are all quick easy-to-eat fast food versions of more time consuming and serious dishes and are – I believe – quite famous around the world. Their slow-food counterparts would be sashimi, ramen and sukiyaki. Another one, maybe not as famous abroad, is the simple and quite generic yakiniku, or grilled meats that are available from street vendors or small whole in the wall shops basically around every single station in in Tokyo and probably most of Japan as well. You pick what kind of meats you want and the staff will grill them up for you while you wait. There’s usually two choices when it comes to seasoning, shio or tare. Shio is basically a clear salt sauce and tare is a soy based barbecue sauce. For some reasons foreigners tend to always go for the tare while Japanese are more likely to pick ship, at least in my limited experience. I usually don’t eat a lot of meat, especially not in the summer but when I passed this little yakinikuya in Ota Ward’s Koujiya (大田区糀谷) I had to try a few. You can see from their menu what they offer and how much it is. I had liver, chicken-onion and pig tongue. Delicious!
Oh you have me drooling here. I am a carnivore, but I don’t consume a lot, it just doesn’t feel good to do so. Still, I do enjoy it when it’s cooked well. And anything on a stick please. Ever since I was a small girl searching for shish-kabobs, which from my itty bitty standpoint was hard to spot during New York festivals.
Ah, I still love kebabs! There’s some really good ones here in Tokyo, but my favorite restaurant closed so now I have to rely on the street side vendors on their midnight haunts…
I know that place! I sampled some of their wares about 2 years ago (and now I look at the calendar, exactly 2 years ago). Was certainly good stuff. And little surprise I normally go for shio…
Liver I’ll take the tare mind.
One minor pedantry—this is yakitori or kushiyaki. Yakiniku is something quite different, normally Korean-style barbeque.
We have yakiniku restaurants in the US, which is very much Japanese…
http://www.jubanrestaurant.com/about.html –> they say nothing about Korea here, at least.
I just had yakitori for the first time a few weeks ago — and it was a very easy-on-the-eyeballs version of chicken, i.e. white meat. (Despite being a diehard carnivore, not sure I could bring myself to try pig tongue!) Sounds like we got the tare sauce too. Salt is fast becoming taboo in the US given heart disease being the #1 killer, so I can’t imagine a salt sauce would go over big even if this became mainstream.
(While most Japanese-American cuisine is in the relatively safe miso soup/edamame/sushi/sashimi/teriyaki/udon/mochi-ice cream territory, the Japantowns I’ve been to get more “authentic,” i.e. shabu shabu places. Still surprised it took a while to learn about yakitori tho!)
The place you linked to doesn’t mention any Korean link, but the hints are there. You can see kimchi in some of the pictures, and “kalbi” (Korean for “rib”) is one of the main meats on the menu. Even here, little is made of the Korean connection in many mainstream places as it’s become part of the local culture, but nobody would deny its very close origins. It’s like Taco Bell I guess—anybody that didn’t know Mexican food might think that was American food.
One of the best things about yakitori is its cheapness. There was a place that recently closed down near me (despite being around for decades judging by the state of the store front) that had the most peculiar system. It’s just an open window with several unmarked tubs of yakitori sticks, and sheets of paper nailed to the wall behind the counter with the prices of each item, which ranged from 80 to 120 Yen (around about a dollar a piece). You just take and eat what you want, identify the items on the wall, add up the price in your head, and leave the correct money on the counter. There was even a pile of small change you could help yourself to where necessary. 100% honour system, but it worked, and the instinct was to be sure there was no mistake in your calculations.
Thank for the pedantry Coal! I am not a foodie so I wouldn’t know much about these things. And of course you’d do the ship… (^-^;) You are more Japanese than the Japanese! (^O^)
I *am* the Japanese!
I a-l-w-a-y-s love your snapshots!! These photos are making me very hungry. I’m visiting Tokyo again in November for my (belated) honeymoon…my husband and I are just dying to pig-out on the delicious food again!
Thank you! I am glad I am not a foodie, there’s so much good stuff here I’d probably eat myself to death. Good thing you’re coming in November too, this summer it is certainly too hot for eating…! (^-^;) I have no appetite these days…
Oh boy! When I took my husband (who was my boyfriend at the time) to Tokyo for his first time, we went in July. Needless to say, he vowed never to go back there in the summer. The last time we visited, it was in December and it was perfect!
December is great, but my favorite is November. The shops are all decked up for Christmas in December so…. (^-^)
<3 <3 <3
Haha… (^-^;)
Wonder why, but food posts are one of my favourites, maybe I love my stomach that much?
And of course the shots you make make the food look even more delicious!
I really must try to do food posts more often… I am just terrible at them! But then again, there are so many people who do food much better than me in blogging!
And such a handsome oniisan serving the yakitori! You always find the most handsome guys and beautiful girls! (And adorable kids!)
Haha… well, it doesn’t hurt to focus on the most handsome people in any group… (^-^;)