A note on the words: yakiniku is Japanese-style grilled meat you cook yourself at the table, and horumon means the offal cuts. Tare is the seasoned dipping sauce; moro-miso is a coarse, chunky miso. Wagyu is Japanese beef; karubi is short rib, harami skirt, mino the first stomach, tetchan the large intestine, tsurami the cheek, tontoro the fatty pork jowl, and tanmoto the thick base of the tongue. Namul are seasoned vegetables, kimchi is salted fermented vegetables (hakusai is Chinese cabbage), and gochujang is Korean fermented chili paste. A shichirin is the small charcoal brazier set on the table. Otoshi is the small dish an izakaya brings with your first drink whether you ordered it or not. Tsuruhashi is the Korean quarter of Osaka. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
Tsuruhashi Yakiniku Matsuyoshi Shinjuku nishiguchi ten on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
I want to eat something good today too. This is Hangover Meshi. This time, Tsuruhashi Yakiniku Matsuyoshi at the west exit in Shinjuku. We had decided to drink in Shinjuku and were wandering the drinking streets by the west exit. A look inside showed it empty enough that we could walk straight in, so in we went. As the name says, this must be the Matsuyoshi in Tsuruhashi in Osaka opening a branch in Tokyo. I did not know the Tsuruhashi shop, but if they can open in Tokyo then hopes are high.
Inside it looks like a cluttered izakaya.
The sort of place you can walk into without any fuss. This is exactly what you want.
Yakiniku, horumon and grilled meat skewers seem to be the main business.
First things first: a draft beer.
The otoshi is cabbage and cucumber.
The tare is apparently what this shop is known for. This is Matsuyoshi’s moro-miso tare.
They said it works on vegetables as well as meat, so I tried it on the vegetables, and it is good. Yes, this tare is very good.
Perhaps the phrase is: a tare that lures you in with sweetness and then hits you with the punch of miso. Coarsely chopped miso and garlic, with a sweet-hot gochujang sort of savor mixed through it, so at first it is a gentle sweet saltiness. But after that the fermented depth and fragrance peculiar to miso, and the rich savor of it mixed with the fat of the meat, swell slowly in your mouth.
The shichirin is ready too. Horumon and yakiniku around a shichirin is genuinely exciting.
This kimchi is apparently sent direct from Tsuruhashi.
Raw tsurami may be a first for me. Tsurami is from the face, I think. I have an image of cheek meat being fairly firm, and eating tsurami it is indeed substantial meat. For something to pick at with a drink, this much spring to it is just right.
Every time, I agonize over what to do with the scallion piled on top. Do you turn it over and not mind the scallion falling off? Or grill it as it is and eat it half rare? If it is thin the latter is fine, but this one was on the thick side, so I turned it over.
The harami was rich red meat and very good indeed. Good harami, this shop’s harami.
An assortment of horumon: liver, tetchan and so on. The moment you start ordering horumon the pace of your drinking suddenly picks up. It must be the strongly seasoned tare that goes with horumon that pulls the drinks along.
Since we were here I ordered some skewers too: the wagyu karubi skewer, and the assortment.
What are they — tontoro, liver, harami and heart, perhaps?
I asked for all of them with tare, and these skewers are good dipped in that moro-miso tare as well.
Since you do not have to grill them, it is an excellent format for eating quickly. You could even skip the shichirin and order everything in skewer form. Anyone who worries about the smell in their clothes would be grateful for that.
As someone who loves mino, I am obliged to eat this.
Beef tongue once more at this stage.
To finish I took the assortment, which lets you taste both tanmoto and tan. Yes, satisfied. We ate a fair amount.
So, a place we walked into on a whim, and the quality turned out to be rather good. The atmosphere is cluttered, but on a weekday evening it was that empty, the horumon and the yakiniku are both good, and with the skewers you do not have to grill anything yourself, which saves the bother. The drinks list has everything you expect of an izakaya. When you want a casual drink by the west exit and cannot decide where, this may be the answer. I shall remember it.
Tsuruhashi Yakiniku Matsuyoshi Shinjuku nishiguchi ten (Yakiniku / Shinjuku Nishiguchi Station, Seibu Shinjuku Station, Shinjuku 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?
