A note on the words: akami is the lean red cut of tuna, as against fatty chutoro and otoro; negitoro is minced fatty tuna with spring onion; shuto is a salt-fermented paste made from the fish’s innards, eaten in small amounts with drinks; the otoshi is the small starter every izakaya serves. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Maguro no Shoshin, 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.
Ikebukuro again this time! We wanted to drink while picking at a few light things — so, to a tuna specialist, Maguro Sho (the name seems to have changed to Maguro no Shoshin?). There is another shop called Uoshin on the same floor. You see a lot of this lately. I wonder whether there is a point to it.
In the end it is the same shop, and near enough the same menu!
Isaribi, was it? There used to be one of those in Ikebukuro too.
Never mind. What I like about shops like this is ordering by QR code from your phone — though occasionally you meet a place with QR ordering and dreadful reception! Not the case here, happily.
Somebody put an antenna in!!
Right — regrouping. Snacks ordered a few at a time, and the drinking commences.
We opened with a highball!
The otoshi is negitoro. Tremendously fatty, thick and sticky.
Let us have some tuna, at least. Bluefin akami — the lean cut.
A vivid deep crimson. Chutoro and otoro are delicious too, but for drinking, akami is my favourite. Firm and springy to the bite, and the more you chew the more the dense savour of the tuna spreads. That iron-tinged depth peculiar to the lean cut, with a clean finish — Good!
A plate ordered purely on the strength of thinking “what?!” when I saw it!
Tuna mayo and sweetcorn!
Yes, it is tuna. Technically. But there is no chance of it being anything other than delicious! Mash it all together. No further explanation required. Far too good. Far, far too good!
“Formerly”, because this was supposed to be bluefin shuto on chilled tofu — but I asked whether I could have just the shuto without the tofu, and they obliged! They even added crackers, which delighted me. This version suits drinking better and is easier to share out. They should put it on the menu properly!
Edamame! And now I think about it — we have barely eaten any tuna.
We ate almost no tuna, but the highball count reached genuinely alarming levels! Too absorbed in conversation, we put far more effort into drinking than eating. If that is the kind of evening you want — hard drinking with decent little snacks — this may be the place?
May you meet something good to eat today too.
Maguro no Shoshin, Ikebukuro (izakaya / Ikebukuro Station, Kanamecho Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.1
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
