A note on the words: yakiniku is Japanese-style grilled meat, cooked slice by slice over a burner set into the table. The cuts keep their Japanese names: tan is tongue, harami the diaphragm, shinshin a lean cut from the inside of the round, ichibo the rump cap, and kamenoko another cut from the round. Udo is a pale mountain vegetable with a celery-like crunch, and ohitashi means it has been blanched and steeped in dashi. Donabe is the earthenware pot the rice is cooked in and brought to the table in. A monaka is a shell of thin, crisp glutinous-rice wafer, here closed around ice cream.
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USHIMITSU NISHIAZABU on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hey, this is Hangover Meshi. Dinner this time was a quiet yakiniku evening at “USHIMITSU NISHIAZABU,” a hideaway grill house in Nishiazabu! Apparently there’s an extremely famous yakiniku place called Nishiazabu Kenshiro, and this is its sister restaurant. The course prices were on the high side, but that made me expect a lot! When I actually got to the front of the building there was a sign but no obvious entrance, and after hunting around a bit I found the restaurant behind a door with no signage on it at all. Nice. It really has that hideaway feeling — or rather, it feels extremely Nishiazabu!
Inside it seems to be entirely private rooms. There was a single corridor with a lot of private rooms off the side of it.
Finest course: 8,800 yen
Whole Ushimitsu course (with all-you-can-drink): 12,000 yen
Course commemorating selection for the Tokyo Yakiniku Top 100 in 2023: 12,000 yen
It was my first time at the restaurant, so I played it safe and booked the most popular one, the 12,000 yen course (without the all-you-can-drink).
Right, a toast with beer first, and the course begins!
Straight off, something with unbeatable impact and an unbeatable name: the “Nishiazabu roll.” Very nice. Very Nishiazabu.
The meat is wrapped around the outside so it looks beautiful, and with caviar and gold leaf sitting on top it really is that kind of dish!
I half expected it to be all show and no substance, but the flavor is spot on. Delicious, melting meat. It works raw, too. You can eat it much like an ordinary maki roll, and it’s delicious.
And this is the chilled turnip soup. A soft saltiness somewhere at the back of it and the flavor of the vegetable — delicious! Careful work.
Three things to grill, from the right: tan, harami and shinshin.
The staff grill them one slice at a time, so you don’t have to do a thing, which is easy. And they grill them beautifully, too.
A pause between courses. A gentle flavor, nicely done.
Around here I switched to a highball!
Carefully selected fillet sandwiched in brioche made with plenty of butter! This is the centerpiece of the course.
A big piece of fillet, grilled to just the right point and springy with it, sandwiched neatly. One bite and it’s seriously good! It’s tender above all, parts cleanly under the teeth, and the more you chew the more the savoriness of the meat floods your mouth. So good!
The next things to grill.
Every piece was grilled to an exquisite point and delicious! It really is better to have a professional do the grilling.
And to finish, donabe rice! Here too, wagyu that’s all but raw!
The bamboo shoots are very tender and soaked through with flavor — delicious! The meat is good, but the seasoned rice is straightforwardly delicious on its own.
Tea before dessert. A moment to breathe.
A large monaka. There’s a scoop of ice cream sitting snugly inside.
Mmm! That was good. Satisfied!
This was the 12,000 yen course, and the volume was about right. Six pieces of meat in all — and although there’s the sandwich and the rice as well, if you’re a big eater it might come up a little short? For someone with a small appetite I think it’s plenty. All the meat was delicious, and the brioche fillet sandwich in particular was superb — just remembering it makes me want to eat it again!
USHIMITSU NISHIAZABU (Yakiniku (Japanese BBQ) / Nogizaka Station, Roppongi Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.6
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
