A note on the words: horumon means offal, grilled at the table over charcoal; tare is the seasoning sauce, as opposed to plain salt; mino, hachinosu and senmai are the first, second and third stomachs of a cow, yan the cut joining the last two; tetchan is large intestine, urute windpipe cartilage, akasen the fourth stomach and hatsugari the aorta at the root of the heart; namul is a Korean dressed vegetable dish; otoshi is the small dish brought to every seat, carrying a small cover charge; yakiniku is the Japanese-Korean style of grilling meat at the table. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Horumon Jinsei Taro-chan 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.
Ask anyone for a good restaurant in Nakano and surely the first name that comes to mind is “Horumon Jinsei Taro-chan”! It is famously hard to book. Book far enough ahead and you can get in without too much trouble.
They offer several set courses, but thinking “I do not really need the rice dishes”, I went a la carte. As always, we ordered whatever we felt like!
First, a beer!
Taro-chan’s namul comes as an assortment of namul and kimchi mixed briskly together. Rather good, getting all those flavours at once! Well — this is what the inside of a bibimbap ends up looking like anyway.
A bargain set with four rare cuts of Tajima Ota beef (salt and tare) and the house offal as well.
A gloriously greedy signature dish that lets you experience the whole shop on a single plate.
How could you not order it!
This was a very large amount of food covering a great deal of ground — exactly the right call!
The salt-seasoned cuts are uwamisuji and kurimi, I think?
Delicious!
Tajima Ota beef is seriously good meat. That marvellous fat goes beautifully with salt. The delicate sweetness that only fine wagyu has, and the savour of the fat welling out, fill the whole mouth.
Then the offal. Heart, extra-fatty horumon, tetchan, urute, akasen and more,
cuts of quite different character, piled up after being marinated thoroughly in a miso tare. The place is called “Horumon Jinsei” — offal for life — so there is no question that this is the true lead!
Grill it slowly over the charcoal and a sweet, fragrant smoke rises gently.
From the moment that smell starts drifting up, I know perfectly well that the chopsticks will not stop! Finish with a shake of the green-chilli vinegar dip and the heavy weight of the offal fat lightens at once, and your hand reaches for the next piece.
Every cut is an explosion of savour, and that sweet fat is irresistible!
Maximum compatibility with beer!!!
I was so satisfied that it had gone clean out of my head — the tare-seasoned meat is still to come.
Is this not the best?
The soy-based tare, a closely guarded recipe said to have been inherited from “Shokudoen”, a yakiniku house that ran for more than sixty years in Kokura in Kyushu, has a weighty richness beneath the sweetness that lifts the savour of the meat enormously. Delicious. Too delicious.
When you come to Taro-chan, you have to have this!
They select only domestic liver, and only the very best-conditioned pieces — the top of the crop. In a category where freshness decides everything, the policy of serving only what is in the finest condition that day is aiming, exactly as the name says, at the championship!!
And what a colour!
A deep crimson, clear and unclouded. The proof of fresh liver!
Once it is on the charcoal, one or two seconds a side. Roll it once on the grate and eat it with the inside still raw — that is the recommended style, and only this level of freshness makes it possible. With the heat touching only the surface, the outside is faintly fragrant and the inside is soft enough to melt.
That contrast is what makes it so good.
Along with a texture that comes apart in the mouth, what spreads is the richness and sweetness that liver has by nature. You really should eat this!
Hatsugari is the aorta, at the root of the heart. Rarer still than ordinary heart, and its great virtue is a distinctive firm crunch. Grilled slowly over charcoal, the surface takes on a fragrant char while the inside keeps its dense spring, so every bite gives a pleasant resistance. Melted butter and soy cling to it, and the sweetness of the fat and the deep savour of the soy layer up together, swelling the simple pleasure of offal several times over!!
And the smell of it — that mellow scent of butter!
Is there any offal that was not on the platter?
— and what they suggested was prime mino and yan. There is a very hot miso tare, and since everyone turned out to like fierce heat, we ordered without hesitation!
Prime mino is a particular favourite of mine!
The surface is carefully scored, and grilled slowly over charcoal it curls back from the edges as it takes on a fragrant colour. The instant it is in the mouth there is a crisp, satisfying bite, and with every chew a slow sweetness and savour well up. There is not much fat, yet the depth grows the more you chew — a pleasure peculiar to prime mino that no other cut gives.
Yan is the rare cut that joins the second stomach (hachinosu) and the third (senmai). Despite its reddish look it is mild in character, and on the charcoal a firm crunch and a chewy spring wind together, with savour seeping out at every bite. There is a decent sweetness of fat, and yet the finish is clean.
It also goes superbly with the fierce miso tare; for all the talk of fierce heat, the prickle and the richness of the miso draw the natural savour of the offal right out. And above all, making it fiery makes it go with beer.
Well! We ate and ate. Thoroughly satisfied!
So — exactly as its reputation promised, a seriously good restaurant.
Five years now rooted in a small counter of about twenty-six square metres in Nakano, and enormously popular — but book early enough and it does not seem impossible to get a table.
The Taro-chan platter is unquestionably too good value to argue with, and with every mouthful of fine meat and offal you feel why this place is so loved!
Strongly recommended! Or rather — I am definitely going back.
Horumon Jinsei Taro-chan (yakiniku / Nakano Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★★☆ 4.0
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
