A note on the words: unagi is freshwater eel, split, skewered, steamed and grilled, and eaten in Tokyo mostly in summer. Kabayaki is the version glazed with a sweet soy tare; shirayaki is grilled plain with no sauce, eaten with salt and wasabi. Unaju is kabayaki laid over rice in a lacquered box. Uzaku is eel with cucumber in vinegar, umaki is eel rolled inside an omelet, and tataki here means the flesh chopped and dressed. Hone senbei are the eel bones fried into crackers, and otoshi is the small dish you are served and charged for on sitting down, which is not a scam but the cover charge. Sansho is the citrusy Japanese pepper always set beside grilled eel. The menu grades its portions i and ro, the first two letters of the old Japanese alphabet. Shochu is a distilled spirit. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Kanda Kikukawa Kanda on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Well then, this is Hangover Meshi. I had business in Akihabara and walked around a great deal, then drifted about wondering where to go for a drink. It was still fairly early, so not much was open yet. But walking past this shop, the smell of grilling eel came drifting out and my mind was made up. Let us be elegant for once and drink with eel!
The name Kikukawa does seem to turn up a lot among eel restaurants — do they share a root, I wonder?
I went to the fourth-generation one at Tokyo Station, and there was a Kikukawa in Shinjuku as well. As for Kanda Kikukawa, I went to the Hibiya branch once before. That one appears to have moved into a hotel somewhere since. (All three links are in Japanese.)
Unaju (i) 5,450 yen
Unaju (ro) 7,100 yen
Kabayaki / shirayaki (i) 5,350 yen
Kabayaki / shirayaki (ro) 7,000 yen
There is only 100 yen between the unaju and the kabayaki. For 100 yen you would think the rice is worth having.
But I came here to drink! So: one kabayaki and one shirayaki. Everything else builds out from there!
First, beer! Asahi Premium Jukusen!
A snack — or the otoshi? — of hone senbei came with it^^
Crunching my way through that, I waited for the kabayaki and the shirayaki.
And the kabayaki arrives!!! It looks wonderful!
And the shirayaki too!!
Lined up side by side they make rather a good picture.
A feast for the eyes lol lol lol
A mouthful of the shirayaki first.
Mmm! Delicious. The shirayaki is clean and lets you taste the eel directly, which is the good part!
The gentle salt, and the wasabi, are both excellent. A little sansho over it is good too. I was drinking beer, but this made me want shochu!
And here, a shocking discovery lol
This shop only has beer or Kikumasamune, the sake lol
Ah well — I had wanted it alongside a barley shochu, but there was nothing for it, so beer it was, and satisfying even so!
The kabayaki is good too. The tare is clean-tasting and the sweetness felt restrained to me.
A toasty fragrance over plump flesh, which is what you want.
Small in size, yet the taste of eel comes through clearly. Really, being able to drink with this is a fine thing.
This shop closes at 19:50, it turns out.
I think I went in at around 17:30, and last orders came round in no time at all.
In which case, I thought, and added the uzaku. Uzaku, kabayaki and shirayaki lol What luxury.
In for a penny, I thought, and ordered the shirayaki tataki.
Steeped in a sharply acidic sauce, it tastes rather like fugu skin in ponzu.
The texture is soft and the scent of eel opens out gently — an interesting dish.
Right, let us order everything they have! And with that the eel snacks were conquered.
Eel folded into a fine-textured omelet — delicious! Thoroughly satisfied!
I did not have any rice, but I drank a good deal of beer and ate a good deal too. Drinking with eel is a luxury, but it is a good thing once in a while. You do inevitably start wanting an unaju, but using eel as a drinking snack like this is worth doing now and then. I would be glad of a few more kinds of drink, though I imagine not many people use the place this way lol It was delicious.
Kanda Kikukawa, Kanda branch (unagi / Kanda Station, Awajicho Station, Iwamotocho 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?
