A note on the words: yodare-dori, literally mouth-watering chicken, is the Sichuan cold dish of poached chicken under chili oil, and Senfu is the shop putting its own name on the plate. Mapo tofu is tofu simmered in a spicy fermented bean sauce, and sansho is the citrusy Japanese pepper that leaves the tongue tingling. Gyoza are the pan-fried dumplings; stick gyoza are simply wrapped long and folded shut at the ends. Okoge means scorched rice, crisped hard and served with a hot sauce poured over it at the table. The kitchen will set the heat of the yodare-dori for you, and the top step is the one the shop calls hell; ask for it by name or point at the menu, and they will understand. A highball is whisky with soda, the default drink at a place like this. Chengdu, where the spices come from, is the capital of Sichuan province in China. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Details for Senfujin Ka on AutoReserve (English)
Hello, this is Hangover Meshi. We had settled on drinking somewhere around Roppongi-itchome, and the serious-looking place we turned up was Senfujin Ka! At a glance it has the air of one of those cheap, no-nonsense Chinese places you find everywhere, but the chef apparently began cooking at fifteen, trained his way around Sichuan and now runs the shop as the third generation, with Sichuan and Hunan cooking as his specialty. So it is quite the real thing. Everything on the menu looks good.
Traditional Sichuan technique, and spices brought in from Chengdu in Sichuan, appear to be the selling point!
The menu is enormous, so we decided to go a la carte and fire off whatever we felt like.
Above all, the mapo tofu that carries the shop’s own name — the Senfu mapo tofu — was one I wanted to eat!
A highball! There appears to be a large size as well.
This one also carries the shop’s name: the yodare-dori.
You get to choose the heat, and naturally we went for hell-hot! They warned us it really was quite hot, but never mind — I have eaten all sorts of spicy things, and a proper shop like this is surely not going to send out something far beyond all reason! So I ordered it. And the heat is properly there! It is hot! But it is a delicious sort of hot. To my own palate it does not quite reach hell, I would say lol Still, anyone who cannot take chili would certainly never manage it. The flavor of the chilies and the chili oil, the juicy chicken and the peanuts all come together nicely. Very good.
And the chili sauce spooned over the top is another fine thing! The highballs go down fast.
We had this made hot as well.
Properly hot, but the savor behind it is excellent! The aroma of the spices really lifts off the plate.
The tofu is broken up a little, and this is a mapo that would go beautifully with rice. Served scalding in a stone pot, which is good too! High heat makes chili feel hotter still. Mapo tofu eaten while breaking into a sweat and gasping for air — perfect!
The squid and celery, ordered simply because it looked good.
Look at the celery, that color. The color has held beautifully. The squid is scored open properly as well, which is a fine sight.
The griddled sesame gyoza.
Wrapped in the manner of stick gyoza! Piping hot, and the filling bursts out juicy and delicious! It goes with a drink, and how.
One of the good things about this shop is how many griddle dishes there are!
This is the hugely popular griddled lamb with cumin and sansho pepper. Lamb and cumin is a sure thing of a pairing, after all.
The lamb is seasoned so that both the cumin and the sansho come through clearly, and it is superb. Lamb and cilantro is another unbeatable pairing, so this dish is simply invincible.
Last was the seafood okoge.
Crisped rice heated until rock hard, then finished in one go by pouring the sauce over it so that it hisses.
The aroma drifting up is lovely, but it is the sheer heat of the thing that gets you. Wonderful! The vegetables and seafood are cooked to just the right springy point and taste excellent. A gently salted sauce wraps around them all, and very good it is too.
I walked in thinking it was an everyday neighborhood Chinese place in Roppongi-itchome, but it turned out to be a genuinely good one, not to be underestimated! Best of all is the number of scalding iron-pan dishes. You end up ordering highball after highball! The prices are not high either, and holding an ordinary get-together here would surely make everyone happy. Having found a good shop, I think I shall be dropping in from time to time.
Senfujin Ka (Chinese / Roppongi-itchome Station, Akasaka Station, Tameike-sanno 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?
