A note on the words: dashimaki tamago is the rolled omelette made with dashi; shuto is a salt-fermented paste of fish innards, pungent and intensely savoury; jidori is free-range chicken; the otoshi is the small starter every izakaya serves. Seating here is horigotatsu — tatami with a sunken well for your legs, shoes off at the door. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Izakaya Ajisai on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Drinkers, thank you for waiting. This is Hangover Meshi!
Azabu-juban this time! When you go out to drink feeling wrung out, you need somewhere you can take your shoes off and relax, do you not? Leave it to me! For exactly that, allow me to introduce “Izakaya Ajisai”, where every seat is tatami! Somebody told me about this place. You take your shoes off at the entrance and put them in the shoe locker. The whole room is tatami, and everything, counter included, is sunken-floor style^^
It presents as a seafood izakaya, but the menu itself is quite broad.
First, of course, beer!
Starting with salad!
The royal road of drinking snacks: edamame. Coming into season, I suppose?
The fresh fragrance of lemon, seasoned with garlic and salt.
The acidity of the lemon cuts sharply through the fat and salt of the gizzards, leaving a light finish. Delicious.
The reassuring dashimaki tamago.
Cooked to just the right point, and delicious! Very moist and tender — high quality! The pickled ginger alongside is good too.
The liver slides straight off the skewer; the surface is crisply marked while the inside is cooked to a melting, rare-ish point. One bite and, along with that sticky texture, the creamy sweetness peculiar to liver fills the mouth! The tare is lightly sweet-savoury, supporting rather than obstructing the liver’s natural richness.
Crisp-fried, fluffy chips tangled with shuto, so salt, savour and the aroma of fermentation arrive in three stacked layers! Something like a Japanese answer to anchovy fries, perhaps. Extremely good, and it went down well with everyone^^
Crunchy and delicious^^
Another snack that proved popular.
The contrast between the creamy yellow cut face and the purple skin is beautiful^^ Put chopsticks to it and it collapses softly; in the mouth the butter and the aubergine juices unwind together. The crisp mizuna greens laid underneath let the weight of the oil escape, and the finish is surprisingly light!
So — unexpectedly, the snacks were good across the board. As an everyday izakaya, the all-tatami room makes it a genuinely relaxing space. I think it counts as something of a hidden gem even within Azabu-juban, so I shall use it again!
May you meet something good to eat today too.
Izakaya Ajisai (izakaya / Azabu-juban Station, Roppongi Station, Akabanebashi Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.2
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
