Muromachi Toriya, Nihonbashi (むろまち鳥や)

Woo hoo, this weird-looking chicken place does some great lunch specials. I almost want to go back to try their chicken ramen set. It looks like it should be yoshoku, or maybe a coffee shop.

But inside is smoky as hell, with this guy manning a seemingly-unventilated grill and churning out an endless series of grilled chicken parts.

Churning out an endless series of tasty chicken parts, I should say. This is the Y1k lunch bowl. After the waitress nattered about how the tenderloin was both a little raw and also topped with wasabi, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are no nasty bits in this bowl. The cooking is also excellent – nothing worse in my book than under-cooked yakitori (except for the tenderloin, where that’s what they’re trying to do). Quail eggs are a good indicator of skill, I think, and these were soft inside and out, not hard and leathery like they can be.

While I was sitting there thinking what a nice lunch and good value that bowl was, the guy next to me complained “I’m still waiting for one more stick.” What a good idea, I thought, augmenting your bowl with something else (I’ve been eating too much). Then the chef gave me some meatballs. I had to ask, did you really mean to give these to me? But they’re part of the set, which means I would pay Y200 more than I did, or something.

For suffering through an overly long and not that interesting post, I propose to reward you with a picture of a fancy deco-truck that I saw parked in an alley nearby. You can thank me later.
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