A note on the words: yakiniku is grilled meat you cook yourself at the table. Tan is tongue, harami the skirt, and horumon covers the offal cuts — mino, maruchou and the rest, each with a different texture.
Yakiniku Champion, Tobu Ikebukuro on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Drinkers, thank you for waiting. It is Hangover Meshi time.
So, I came up to the top of Tobu Ikebukuro wondering about lunch — and there is Yakiniku Champion. I had only just been to the main branch, but the person with me did not appear to have been, so we settled on grilled meat for lunch here.
We worked a la carte, combining things with the lunch menu.
Sat down. And first?
Flicking through the menu, I found a tan-shio — salted tongue — carrying the Champion name.
I probably could not have had it last time because I took a course, but I was curious, so I ordered it. First one slice of tongue on the grill, cooked briefly on one side only. It is thinly cut so the heat goes through fast — once the edges curl, it is ready. Then you pile plenty of the spring onion sauce onto the cooked tongue and roll it up, though you have to move quickly or it overcooks.
One mouthful and the soft resistance of the tongue and the crunch of the spring onion arrive together. The black-peppered salt, the fragrance of sesame, and the faint heat and scent of the onion layer up and lighten the richness of the fat. Thin, yet not lacking, and the sweetness of the tongue spreads slowly as you chew.
This is very good.
And grilled meat means my favourite: harami, the skirt.
On the grill the sauce starts bubbling and the fragrance rises all at once. Harami is lean but it has fine marbling running through it, and I think it is at its best cooked hard over a strong heat.
Bite in and the deep savour that only lean meat has, along with the sweetness of the marbled fat, floods out. The sweet-salty sauce chars fragrantly and the black pepper tightens the flavour. Being diaphragm muscle it has real springiness, and the juices come back at you the more you chew. Lean-led and not oppressively fatty, so you can eat any amount of it.
A satisfying set: the meat in the lead, with rice, salad and a small dish of namul. The meat is marbled lean coated in a sweet-salty sauce, and once grilled, the rice does not stop.
Having had rice, you want a bit more to drink and something to pick at, do you not?
So we ordered the assorted offal. The pleasure of a platter is that every cut has a completely different texture. First the thick premium mino. The surface is finely scored, and it gives a satisfying crunch as you bite. Mino is a must whenever I come for grilled meat.
The shimacho and maruchou give the springy resistance of the outer skin and then a flood of fat from inside, which suits the mildly hot miso sauce perfectly. The korikori is cartilaginous, exactly as its name suggests, and never gets dull to chew. The liver has no off-smell — melting and rich, with the savour of iron coming through slowly.
Everything is fresh enough to have no off-notes, and helped along by the sweet-salty miso sauce, the highballs keep going down. More drinks ordered, the rest of the meat enjoyed, and that was that.
Thoroughly satisfied. Once we started, we drank and ate quite normally and came away very happy. The meat is high quality and good, as you would expect of Yakiniku Champion, and being able to eat at this level without going to Ebisu may be quite a thing. The extraction is good too, so you do not come out smelling of it — if it is grilled meat in Ikebukuro, this may well be the recommendation.
May you meet something good to eat today too.
Yakiniku Champion, Tobu Ikebukuro (yakiniku / Ikebukuro Station, Higashi-Ikebukuro Station, Toden-Zoshigaya Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.5
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
