Thursday, February 05, 2009

How to Enjoy a Meal at Yakiniku Senri (or an equivalent yakiniku restaurant)

Bring a group of friends. It's more fun to have a room to yourselves!

If it's your first time, try a variety of meats. Some excellent choices would be beef (karubi cut being one of the fattier and hence tastier), beef tongue (grilled tongue has a different texture from stewed or boiled tongue), and cuttlefish. (By that last sentence, I really mean: these were what we tried. We ended up ordering another plate of the karubi because it was so tasty.)

Personally, I found that the meats, sliced as thinly as they are, do not need to cook for very long. Especially if you prefer your meat a little rarer than usual. Set the fire as high as it can go, then just sear each piece on both sides. Dip in soy sauce, lemon juice, miso sauce, or a mixture of the three.

Kimchi is a great accompaniment to grilled meats, and itself can be heated on the grill, where it will pick up some of the meats' flavor.

Imported Japanese beers in the form of Asahi and Kirin are available, if a bit pricey. (They are much more flavorful than local beers, that's for sure.) They also have the traditional sake, of course.

Since it was the first time for most of us there, we didn't bother ordering anything that didn't need to be cooked on the grill, because, you know, what would be the point? But they also have a good selection of the usual Japanese suspects: sushi, sashimi, tempura, ramen, etc.

Last note: they open at 11am, then close for two hours at 3 to 5pm, then are open again until 5 in the morning. We were unlucky enough to have arrived there squarely in the middle of their break, and had to kill some time before we could actually eat.

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