A note on the words: a yatai is a street food cart, and the shop is named for that. Rendang is an Indonesian dish of beef simmered slowly in coconut and spices; satay is grilled skewered meat with peanut sauce; khai luk khoei, literally son-in-law eggs, is a Thai dish of boiled eggs fried and coated in a sweet-sour tamarind sauce. Cilantro is the herb the Japanese menu calls pakuchi. Motsuni is offal simmered in miso, kakuni is slow-braised pork belly, and lu rou fan is the Taiwanese bowl of rice with minced braised pork. Ba Ba Ba is the Vietnamese beer 333. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Tonan Asia Yatai Agariko Shokudo on AutoReserve (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
I want to eat something good today too. This is Hangover Meshi. I got it into my head that I wanted Thai food and booked a Southeast Asian place deep in Ikebukuro: Tonan Asia Yatai Agariko Shokudo. I had never been, but looking at Tabelog the menu seemed to have plenty of properly authentic things on it, and it looked ideal for a quick drink, so I booked and went. It is over towards the north exit. That area, full of cluttered little shops, is an interesting part of town. I rather like it.
Step inside and the interior really does look like a street stall.
Ordering is by QR code. The atmosphere feels genuinely like the real thing, which is lovely.
It was thriving and every seat was taken. People without bookings kept arriving to ask whether they could get in. I was glad I had booked. There is so much that looks good that I intend to order whatever I want, one thing after another.
Noisy and cheerful, and the atmosphere is good. I rather like this sort of place.
The condiments on the table look like the real thing too, which is fun. Sriracha and chili are both there, which will please anyone who likes heat.
For now I ordered a Ba Ba Ba to get into a Thai frame of mind.
Apparently on any day with a three in it, 333 is half price. Cheap is virtue.
The cilantro salad. Look at the size of that pile. For that I would happily pay 550 yen.
They know what they are doing in putting no dressing on it at all. It means you can add extra cilantro to everything else that arrives.
And this is the Indonesian-style simmered beef.
Simmered dishes are good in every country, are they not. Motsuni, the topping on lu rou fan, kakuni, things braised in wine, stews.
As expected, this rendang is outstandingly good. Simmered in coconut, I think? And the spicing is properly done. Adding cilantro makes it better again, so I would strongly recommend ordering it together with the cilantro salad.
Satay. Chicken seasoned with spices, grilled, and eaten with a rich sweet-savory peanut sauce. Sweetness, depth, the heat of the spices and the flavor of peanut all tangle together into something you cannot stop eating. I could manage any number of them.
At a nearby table someone was spinning a roulette wheel.
Looking at the menu, there is a roulette drink. You spin to decide the size of your drink.
It is set up so that you almost always land on bucket size, but there are squares here and there for half price or free, so if you are going to drink anyway you may as well spin. And sure enough I landed on the bucket. A bucket highball.
The menu described it as a Southeast Asian take on oeuf mayo.
Lightly fried soft-boiled eggs coated in a faintly sweet, spicy sauce. Good.
This one is soft shell shrimp, fried. Faintly spicy, and since it is soft shell and fried through you can eat it whole, heads and all, crunching away. The shells are where the shrimp aroma is concentrated, after all. I may prefer this to eating them any other way — the shrimp character is stronger.
Every dish is properly authentic. Extremely good. There are plenty of interesting things you do not often see elsewhere, like satay and rendang, so even choosing from the menu is fun. In the end the roulette drink was so entertaining that I got through about three bucket highballs. And when I looked at the bill at the end it was remarkably cheap. Is there a better everyday drinking place than this? I shall definitely go again.
tounanaziayatai agarikoshokudou (Thai / Ikebukuro Station, Kita-Ikebukuro Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.6
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
