A note on the words: izakaya is a Japanese pub, and taishu izakaya the cheap and cheerful sort meant for everyday drinking. A lemon sour is shochu, a distilled spirit, with soda and lemon. Agedashi tofu is tofu lightly floured, deep-fried and served in a dashi-based sauce; dashi is the stock of kelp and dried bonito that underpins most Japanese cooking. Tare is a sweet soy-based glaze. Marugame is a city in Kagawa prefecture on Shikoku, known for bone-in grilled chicken. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
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Toriichizu, Ueno Station Front, on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
I want something good to eat today too. This is Hangover Meshi. I met up with someone who could manage about forty minutes of drinking. A forty-minute bout. Spending time choosing a shop would be a waste of it, so: “Toriichizu, Ueno Station Front”, the first thing we saw.
We asked, they could seat us straight away, and in we went.
Good news. They said fourth floor, but the place turned out to run a long way vertically.
The menu was a shock — though it was written on the sign outside as well. A freshly squeezed lemon sour for 80 yen. The lemon alone must cost about that. And in the mega mug it is 160 yen. The pricing makes no sense. Far too cheap.
With the clock against us we decided to order everything in the mega size where we could.
The mega lemon sour that arrived really is freshly squeezed, and comes with two lemon halves. Genuinely cheap enough to worry you. I did feel the lemon sour had a slight sweetness to it — perhaps the shochu base itself is sweetened.
Crisp chicken skin skewers. A little strong on the fat. They are good, though crisp outside and juicy inside would have been perfect.
This agedashi tofu was excellent. Fried tofu sitting in a sweetish sauce, fluffy inside, very nicely done. The sauce — dashi-rich, on the sweet side, finished a touch salty — obviously goes well with a drink. But it was the tofu, crumbling softly, that was so good. Apparently it is house-made. That is a fine thing.
Now this one. Let us call it a dish with a history. Apparently it was ordered by misreading it as gizzard. The chicken liver still had a strong note of the gaminess that had not been drawn out, although the sauce itself is good. Even eaten together with the spring onion the aftertaste was not quite right. A shame. Cheap is good, mind.
Apparently a local specialty of Marugame. Bone-in chicken dipped in tare and grilled. The fatty part of the skin is crisp, the tare is firmly there, and the char smells good. The meat inside is fairly moist. The marinade must be doing the work. This one was good too. There seems to be an extra-hot option as well, and I would have liked to order it with that.
With no time to spare the snacks stopped there, and we simply drank mega after mega — whereupon the liquid filled the stomach before the drink reached the head. You end up sloshing. Even so, for a quick drink in a short window it was very good indeed. Cheap is, to a degree, its own justice. When a drink is 80 yen, I think the right approach is to enjoy yourself and not mind the rest too much.
Taishu Izakaya Toriichizu, Ueno Station Front (Izakaya / Keisei-ueno Station, Ueno-okachimachi Station, Ueno Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.0
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
