Yakatori and Oden (by G)

Back in Tokyo, just for one nigh, I was in the mood for Yakitori. The one place I know you are guaranteed to get yakitori is in Shinjuku, so I headed out there.

I picked a bit badly with the bar I went to - all the food was grilled out back and brought to the dining area. I went with omakasi, not really in that it was a defined set of skewers. Liver, chicken mince, leg meat, something else and skin. It was okay, somewhere between not great and average. I'm still not a huge fan of the liver.

After I was done with the chicken I contemplated the oden menu, keen observers of the blog will know that I was set to get oden some days ago but ended up getting wasted instead.

I would have liked to get the daikon, I'm a fan of that particular vegetable but I was sat right in front of the oden vats and saw how big it was, so I took a pass.

Instead I went with an egg, potato, tofu, chicken balls, and the weirdest looking thing that I could see - I thought it might have been a section of lotus root.

Turns out the lotus root was actually a cylindrical sausage - awesome. The tofu was about the best tofu I've ever had, the chicken balls were great, an egg is always a welcome dinner item - the highlight, however, was the potato. As with Biggs' famous Louisiana Shrimp boil the potato soaked up all the flavour of the broth - and the texture was similar, crumbly and creamy. Amazing.

The oden was the highlight of this dinner.