After a precipitous departure from Feh! The Gyoza Bar, we were left in the wilds of Kayabacho with not a plan in the world. Pisser. I remembered that Maru was just around the corner (OK, I never forgot…I’ve been meaning to go to Maru’s 2nd or 3rd floor for ages, but at this point the 1st floor standing bar seemed like a good idea.). As befits a good thing, Maru’s 1st floor was packed, and we wandered on.
Further down the street (towards Shintomicho, I think?) is a building with a Takadaya and another place in the basement. I suddenly conceived a strong desire for yakitori, and we headed for the basement (digression re: previous post: clearly Takadaya is a big chain. I’m not sure what’s up with the Otemachi branch that I went to; just a different and rarer format, I think). There was a tout working the stairs, and he tried to steer us into the Takadaya, saying “Oh, we have yakitori here too!” but I stuck to the plan and went into Toritetsu. Oddly, he announced us there, so maybe the two places are related, or else he was just being polite.
Toritetsu – like Ryori no Tetsujin? Is this place the Iron Man of Chicken? Well, it wasn’t bad, I’ll tell you what. I admit that I went there almost entirely out of an obligation to complete further research, and in fact my companion didn’t eat anything. But a few nibbles never go astray…
Toritetsu is one of those casual places that’s gotten their act together menu-wise and has a bunch of glossy pages of food pictures. There are special spreads for the chicken products, and I ordered two of the sasami kushi and two tsukune, purely for research (they have about 6 types of each, plus the normal yakitori stuff). These looked a little more creative – sasami is the ‘tenderloin’ of the chicken, and I got one with wasabi paste and seaweed, plus another with plum paste. The tsukune were better – one with cheese stands out in my mind, while the other is a grilled blur.
Nuts, I just realized that I’m blogging about a visit to Applebee’s, or thereabouts; there are at least 50 of these in Tokyo. Well, as a place to take your visiting friends and family, or when you desire fairly cheap eats of a bird-influenced and chicken-infused nature, with a heavy Asian influence, this is an OK destination.
http://www.tori-tetsu.com/
〒104-0032
東京都中央区八丁堀2-27-10
八丁堀ファーストビル B1F
03-5542-2858