A note on the words: yamaimo is Japanese mountain yam, known for turning into a viscous, frothy puree called tororo when grated raw, and jinenjo is its highly prized wild variety with an even richer earthiness and stickiness. In this dish, tororo is stirred into rice in a sizzling-hot stone bowl together with egg, and with cheese if you pay for the topping, so that the bottom layer of rice turns crisp.
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Yamimo no Ooi Ryori Ten Azabujuuban on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. For lunch this time, I decided to visit “Yamimo no Ooi Ryori Ten Azabujuuban” in Azabu-juban. I knew it existed and had been wanting to go sometime, but had never quite found the chance, so I dropped in for lunch to see how it was — thinking if it looked good, maybe I could come back for drinks in the evening? The location is right near Juban Inari shrine.
Perhaps because I arrived just past 1:00 PM, there were almost no other customers, practically having the place to myself.
Stone-grilled tororo rice — 1,350 yen
Grilled beef tongue set — 1,850 yen
Fish of the day set — 1,350 yen
Curry udon — 950 yen
Hmm, while everything looked delicious, the stone-grilled tororo rice caught my eye, so that is what I chose.
For the topping, I picked cheese!
Posted inside the shop are the producing regions and the growers of their yamaimo!
After a short wait, the tororo rice arrived.
They warned me that the heated stone bowl is very hot, so be careful.
Is it barley rice, I wonder? Good for you! For now, I dumped in the cheese and tororo and mixed it all together.
You have to mix it while it is sizzling hot to get that nice crisped rice, after all!
Then, after waiting a moment, the egg set nicely and looked delicious!
Taking a bite: so good! The crisped bits are fragrant and tasty, but tororo and barley rice go together so well! It is a bit light on salt as is, so drizzling a swirl of soy sauce over it makes it superb.
Side dishes come with it too, though the soup felt a little strong on salt — perhaps they balanced it against the tororo rice, which has virtually zero salt, ha.
Blowing on each steaming bite, I finished every last scrap! It was delicious.
You rarely see a specialty shop for yamaimo, so I thought it was quite unique. The jinenjo was deeply rich in flavor and delicious, so I feel other menu items are probably well worth looking forward to as well. Since yamaimo is probably good for you, I think, it definitely made me want to come back for evening drinks sometime! Recommended.
Yamimo no Ooi Ryori Ten Azabujuuban (Izakaya / Azabu-juban Station, Roppongi Station, Akabanebashi Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.4
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
