A note on the words: kunsei is the Japanese word for smoking food over wood, and the shop’s name carries it in the middle. Otoshi is a small appetizer you’re charged for — it’s the cover charge, not a scam. A highball is whiskey with soda over ice, the standard long drink in a Japanese bar. Harami is the diaphragm, sold in the United States as skirt steak; a wood plank here means the meat is cooked on a slab of wood so it picks up the smell of the burning board. Shime is the closing dish of a drinking night, usually rice or noodles, and dry curry is Japanese curry cooked down with ground meat until almost no sauce is left, served over rice rather than poured around it.
Table of Contents hide
nakameguro Kunsei apartment on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hey, this is Hangover Meshi. This time I dropped in on a dining bar built around smoking, a short walk from Nakameguro: “nakameguro Kunsei apartment.” It looked like such a stylish place that I thought “this has to be good!” and decided on it straight away — and once I actually got there the style was even stronger. Very nice.
You go up to the second floor of a building with real character, into a space with stylishly dim lighting.
Maybe because it’s a smokehouse, there’s a faint, good smell of smoke drifting around. Seriously, a lovely place.
You order by scanning a QR code for the menu. I decided to just work my way through the a la carte list.
Right, drinks first. Looking at the menu, there’s something called a smoked highball.
Well, I can’t not drink that! Here’s what turned up.
A highball with a faint smokiness to it. Also — look how stylish this glass is!
Smoked nuts for the otoshi. Smoked nuts and a highball in the half-dark makes it feel a bit like walking into a bar ^^
A Caesar salad wearing the smell of smoke. It goes well with cheesy things, which is probably why it works so nicely.
And this smoked grilled cheese is seriously good. Crisp outside, soft and fluffy inside, with the smoke sitting firmly on it. It goes with a drink! Honestly, whiskey on the rocks or straight would probably suit it better than a highball, but going too hard would leave me drunk, so a highball it is this time, lol
Harami steak. Meat you can enjoy the smoke on.
It’s fairly compact in size, but that’s exactly why you can still order other things — I thought it was just right. At places like this the main cut of meat can be a bit too much and that’s your evening over!
And here are the pork spare ribs! The melting fat is made light and easy to eat by the smoke.
I could only see as far as “smoked spicy chicken” on the menu, lol
So I ordered this dry curry by mistake. I never expected it to be a dry curry, but on eating it — good! It was also just right as the shime, so I suppose it was a happy accident. Delicious!
Eating a la carte, and with the impression that we’d drunk quite a lot, the total came to just 6,000 yen a head! Cheap. It’s this stylish, it’s comfortable, the smell of smoke is lovely, and we drank all that for 6,000 yen each — there’s no reason not to use it! I feel like I’ve found a very good place in Nakameguro. I’ll save it for when it counts.
nakameguro Kunsei apartment (Dining bar / Nakameguro Station, Daikanyama Station, Ebisu Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.7
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
