A note on the words: yakisoba is wheat noodles fried on a hot plate with a sweet-savory sauce; the double-sided version this shop is known for is pressed and browned hard on both faces before the sauce goes on. Izakaya is a Japanese tavern, and kaisen means seafood, so kaisen don is a bowl of rice topped with raw fish. Kinmedai is splendid alfonsino, a red-skinned deep-water fish usually simmered in soy and ginger; ara-ni means the head and collar cut simmered that way. Anago is saltwater conger eel, and tempura is a light batter for frying. Toyosu is Tokyo’s wholesale fish market. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
Kaisen Izakaya Apetaito Kami-Itabashi 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. Apetaito, famous for its double-sided yakisoba. I remember going to eat at the Takashimadaira branch years ago. It is grilled hard, and I remember thinking the texture was interestingly different from ordinary yakisoba. Then I heard there was a slightly different form of Apetaito in Kami-Itabashi — a seafood izakaya version — so I decided to drop in for lunch. It is a short walk from Kami-Itabashi station.
The shopfront is basically all about the yakisoba, but here and there are seafood dishes to pick at.
Yakisoba, one and a half portions, 1,100 yen
Yakisoba, double portion, 1,400 yen
Kaisen don, 1,800 yen
Anago tempura set, 1,450 yen
Grilled mackerel set, 1,150 yen
Besides the double-sided yakisoba, a great many fish dishes.
The fish is apparently bought at Toyosu every day. Grilled fish, sashimi, tempura, deep-fried — if it is fish, they have it. The menu is enormous. Add the small dishes and the number must be extraordinary. There are plenty of set menus too: rice and yakisoba, yakisoba and kaisen don, yakisoba and roast beef don, yakisoba and beef tendon curry — heavyweight sets that treat the yakisoba as though it were merely a side dish. That said, I thought a set of yakisoba and something else might be more than I could finish, so I decided to have the seafood dishes the shop is proud of.
Walk in and there are already people well into a drink. It is only a little past eleven.
I envy them.
With the early drinkers in the corner of my eye, the kinmedai I had ordered arrived — the head and collar cut, simmered in soy.
The head part of the kinmedai. A whole head, sitting there.
It looks as though there is hardly anything to eat on it, and then you pick at it and all sorts of things come out.
The seasoning struck me as a little heavy on the soy sauce. Seasoned on the assumption that it goes with rice, or with a drink, I should think. A soft scent of ginger keeps any off-smell of the head firmly in check. It has been simmered thoroughly, so the collagen parts are melting. The flesh is on the verge of drying out, but this is a fish with plenty of fat, so it stays soft and easy to eat. The cheek, the head and the flesh round the eye are the main things to eat, I suppose. Yes, good.
This is the double-sided yakisoba.
I had a little. As ever, the surface has had exactly the right amount of moisture driven off it and gone firm, and inside there is a chewy texture, which is distinctive. That must be what comes of grilling both sides that firmly. The seasoning is slightly sweet and also quite strong, so I feel that topping it with an egg yolk or the like would soften it and make it easier to eat.
So: lunchtime. A shame not to be able to drink, but the double-sided yakisoba is strongly seasoned in the first place, and there were plenty of seafood dishes that looked good. Drink your way through the small dishes and then finish with this famous double-sided yakisoba — would that not be a splendid evening? It looks as though it is popular at night too, so perhaps I shall drop in next time I can drink from lunchtime.
Kaisen Izakaya Apetaito Kami-Itabashi (Yakisoba / Kami-Itabashi Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.0
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
