A note on the words: yakitori is chicken grilled on skewers over charcoal, and the parts have names of their own. Tsukune is a ground chicken meatball, sori the small cut at the base of the thigh, shiro reba the pale fatty liver, seseri the neck meat, and harami the diaphragm. Kinkan are the immature egg yolks found inside a hen, and sasami the breast tenderloin. Kuzu tofu is a soft, set dish made with arrowroot starch rather than soybeans. Iburigakko is a daikon radish from Akita, smoked and then pickled. Umeboshi paste is made from salted, dried plums, sour and salty at once. Shochu is a distilled spirit, usually drunk long with soda. One link in this article goes to a Japanese-only article on the tonkatsu shop downstairs. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Toriya Kokorobito on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. This time it was a business dinner at Toriya Kokorobito, near Tameike-Sanno Station. Somebody else made the booking, and it was my first visit! I did not even know the place existed, so I was glad of it. It is above Tonkatsu Mizuno (in Japanese). So there was another restaurant up there. I only realized once I was standing in front of the building — I know this sign lol It had been in front of my eyes the whole time and I had never given it a thought.
Up on the third floor, a nice-looking place.
It appears to be entirely private rooms, which makes it good space for a quiet conversation!
[Course C] Five grilled items including the house-made tsukune, closing with their own chicken soup, five courses in all — 7,480 yen
[Kokorobito Course] Seven grilled items including the house-made tsukune, a plate of smoked chicken snacks, a choice of closing dish and so on, five courses in all — 9,790 yen
[Gokujo Tori Course] Foie gras, Kyoto duck loin grilled in miso marinade and more, ten courses in all — 16,280 yen
We took the smallest course and arranged to add anything else we still wanted!
We settled into the room, ordered beer, and after a while the first dish arrived.
Mozzarella steeped in chicken soy, a seasonal kuzu tofu, and a seasonal appetizer. Simmered eggplant, that one.
Around here I finished the beer and moved on to shochu with soda.
This is apparently the specialty: the house-made tsukune! Completely additive-free, apparently, and made with a generous amount of rare cuts. One bite and the savor spreads out — excellent! This is a good thing. It goes wonderfully with shochu.
Sori? The base of the thigh, apparently, and the savor in it is extremely concentrated. Delicious.
The skewers are all on the modest side, small even, which is a good thing^^ Easy to eat.
Soft shiro reba. The toastiness, the airy texture and the savor of white liver are all in the right place.
Harami grilled in a spicy miso marinade is an unusual thing to see. You feel a prickle of heat, but it is a long way from anything you would call hot. It is good.
The last of the grilled items was seseri.
How to put it — the restraint of the portion is what makes it feel refined.
This plate is a fine thing!!
What makes it fine is that a plate like this is the sort of thing you would normally expect at the start. Bringing it out at the end shows a real understanding, and it is wonderful. Because that is how it goes: at the end you keep drinking and keep talking, and having snacks like this in front of you means you can drink on and on lol Picking at them a little at a time. Honestly, the appetizers and the little things are what I want to nibble at the end while I am still drinking. And there is no rice course either, which shows they understand the drinker’s heart! Splendid.
On it: vegetables dressed with umeboshi paste, iburigakko, umeboshi paste with cheese, smoked sasami, and smoked kinkan.
Thoroughly satisfied!
It helps that we were drinking a great deal, but this lightest course is quite enough. We had talked about ordering more if it fell short, and in the event you get completely full. The staff are extremely attentive, the private room makes it easy to talk, and it is rare to find a place meant for business dinners where the yakitori is genuinely good. For a business dinner, or anything where you want to talk properly, this comes highly recommended!!
Toriya Kokorobito (yakitori / Tameike-Sanno Station, Akasaka Station, Kokkai-gijidomae Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.5
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
