A note on the words: oden is a winter stew of eggs, daikon radish, fish cakes, tofu and other pieces simmered slowly in a seasoned broth, and each piece is ordered and eaten separately. Shijimi are small freshwater clams, prized in Japan for the clear, savory broth they give off. Shirasu are boiled baby whitefish, silvery and soft. Negima is the classic Japanese skewer that alternates pieces of meat with segments of long green onion. Uni is sea urchin roe, and ikura is salmon roe. Nomihodai, translated here as all-you-can-drink, is a fixed-price arrangement that includes unlimited drinks for a set stretch of time.
Odenya Zuburoku on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Well then, this is Hangover Meshi. This time I came to “Zuburoku,” an oden shop down a back alley in Roppongi. It sits on a lane set quite a way back from the Roppongi crossing. There is a red paper lantern out front, so you can tell at a glance that this is an oden place — which is nice! There are seats set out on the street, and although they are wrapped in vinyl sheeting, I thought the outside air would come pouring in and it would be cold. Instead the heating was blasting and it was almost too warm, ha. In summer it might actually be pleasantly cool out there.
[Signature Course] 8 dishes + 2.5 hours of all-you-can-drink — 5,500 yen
[Zuburoku Deluxe Course] 8 dishes + 2.5 hours of all-you-can-drink — 6,300 yen
The courses run 5,000 to 6,000 yen with all-you-can-drink included, which is reasonable. This time we picked the 6,300-yen course.
Everything basically arrives on large shared plates, so you portion it out for yourselves.
If anything, it is less a soft-boiled egg than a hard-boiled egg topped with salmon roe and sea urchin. ^^ One bite and it is gone. Very good.
Sea bream, yellowtail, tuna, horse mackerel, perhaps? The sashimi was simply good! One slice of each kind per person.
And here is the main event, the black oden in shijimi clam broth. Black oden — does that make it Shizuoka-style oden? That is roughly the image I have. I drop in on the oden shops around Roppongi fairly often, and I get the feeling there are more of these variations — black oden, miso oden and the like — than there are plain ones, ha. Maybe eating ordinary oden is the harder thing to manage. Whatever it was, everything had been simmered through properly and tasted great! One piece of each kind per person, divided up from the big plate.
I took them for yakitori, but they were tuna skewers. I suppose this counts as negima in its own way, ha.
Next up, cream croquettes. Crisp outside, molten inside. House-made, I wonder? Somehow I have a slight feeling they might not be.
Crab udon in shijimi clam broth, ha.
Incidentally, this udon gets shared out among everyone too, ha ha ha.
The shijimi broth feels like it is doing your body some good, which is a nice touch. The crab element is just crab flakes scattered on top, so it is not all that strong. Oden is already a gentle sort of meal, and having it stay gentle right through to the udon at the end is very welcome.
Oden somehow feels like it goes down easy on the stomach, too! I want to work it into the year-end party season here and there.
For 6,600 yen with all-you-can-drink, this volume of food plus the drinks is very good value, is it not.
Maybe because the place was quite busy, but for the all-you-can-drink they said it was a glass-exchange system and then hardly came around at all, ^^ so if you go when it is really crowded you may not get to drink your fill (or perhaps that is exactly why it is cheap, ha).
Odenya Zuburoku (Izakaya / Roppongi Station, Nogizaka Station, Roppongi-itchome Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.0
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
