Good things come in small packages

Restaurants in Tokyo are tiny.  For dinner my first night here, we ate at a neighborhood ramen shop that probably only had 8-10 stools around the counter.  Space is hard to come by around here, so people make do with what they have.  This is fine with me- as long as they food is good.  Some of my favorite restaurants back in DC are small as well.  A few weeks back, we went to Yarakucho in search of food stalls.  We had read that there were tiny restaurants underneath the subway.  That visit was unsuccessful.  We found a food hall under the station, but the restaurants were sort of fancy.  We tried again the other night and found it!  Just under the overpass for the JR line are several small restaurants.  You can tell the area is very popular, and we could smell the charcoal-grilled meats as we rounded the corner.

A few restaurant stalls under Yarakucho Station

You have to hand it to these guys.  They really make use of all their space.  Some of the cooking is done outside the actual restaurant.  You can see a guy making soup in the photograph above.  All that separates you from the cold is a thin piece of plastic, kind of like a shower curtain.  We made two or three loops around before we settled on a yakitori place.  I was slightly intimidated by the large table of business men with red faces, but we decided that was a good sign.  As usual, I can't read the menu.  But luckily, I can read the prices (numbers are the same in Chinese)- and they are cheap!

Each skewer of meat is about 150 or 160 yen.  Drinks are about 390 yen.

  We order a good variety of mostly chicken skewers and two big beers.  Most of you know, I've never been a huge beer drinker.  But there is something about Japanese beer I really like.  To me, it kind of tastes like carbonated rice.  Beer-y rice.  Anyway, I love getting a draft beer here.  There is rarely more than one kind available, so you just order a draft beer and you get what they have.  One thing I can't get into is the foam.  Japanese people love extra foam on the top of their beer.  Bartenders back home would never dream of giving you these.

Extra foamy beers

I usually wait a few minutes to let the foam settle before I drink mine.  If no one is looking, I sometimes take a chopstick and push the foam out of the way!  There is something really refreshing about a nice cold beer while sitting under the subway station, partially in the cold.  I can't explain it, but it works.  You know what else works with beer?  Skewered meats.

Our first round off the grill

The chicken wings and meatballs were juicy and savory.  My personal favorite is the skewer with the cartilage-y pieces of chicken.  I know some of you think this is bizarre, but if you've ever seen me eat wings, you know I always clean those bones dry.  The cartilage is the best part!  I live for that combination of soft meat and tough crunch.  Yum.  The skewered leeks are a nice balance to all the chicken.  That was someone's idea of ordering a vegetable.
 

Tiny fish from a tiny restaurant

The little fish- we love the little fish!  The skin gets nice and charred from the grill.  You eat them head first, and they have such a simple flavor.  Sitting here eating these fish reminded me of being at Solomon's with my family.  We always hope for crabs, but sometimes these little fish hop into the crab traps.  Of course we don't throw them back!  They are so yummy, I sometimes enjoy them more than the crabs.

All in all, it was a very fun and tasty dinner.  It's such an interesting experience to sit in this tiny space and watch the food getting cooked.  I admire the families who run these stalls.  If you can make all this good food in such a tiny space, what can't you do?  Here is a picture of the chefs in action:

Tiny kitchen big enough for two

There isn't any meat on it, but that is the grill in the bottom of the picture.  You can see the wood and charcoal burning in between two pieces of metal.  Can you smell the deliciousness wafting off the screen?