Aramaki

42—42 / 66

Ask around about what to eat in Japan, or in Tokyo specifically, and the recommendations lean toward yakitori more often than sushi. The quality of Japanese chicken, far better on the grill than what we get back home, makes an enormous difference, and the prices are gentler than sushi. I try to work a yakitori meal into every trip to Japan when I can. One name that comes up often in those recommendations is Aramaki (新まき), a rising yakitori house that opened in July 2024. The owner-chef, Aramaki Masashi, began at the esteemed yakitori house Torishige (鳥繁), trained for more than three years at the celebrated Ginza Japanese-cuisine restaurant Ginza Kojyu (銀座 小十), ran the cooking rather than the grill at Kamiyacho Omino (神谷町 おみ乃), and passed through the innovative restaurant Hotel's. He is, in other words, a chef equally versed in yakitori and in Japanese cuisine. Against Omino Tsubaki, which I had been to a month before this visit and which is not the same place the chef trained at, Aramaki was satisfying beyond comparison.

He is, in other words, a chef equally versed in yakitori and in Japanese cuisine.

It sits a one-minute walk from the Nakanohashi exit of Akabanebashi station, within view of Tokyo Tower, between the restaurant-dense Azabu-Juban and the newly ascendant Azabudai, right next to the well-known pizzeria PST. There are eight counter seats and a single omakase course. One thing I appreciated the moment I walked in was how much room there is. Japan takes the small-space tendency to its extreme with ramen, but counter dining of every kind, sushi and yakitori included, often runs cramped, and a few places are tight enough to dent the meal itself. Here, a calm, refined atmosphere that recalls a Japanese ryotei comes with genuine space, and it was a real pleasure to sit in. I also liked that the custom grill has a transparent front, so you can watch the chef's hands at work.

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I had come alone and taken a seat at the end of the counter, opening with a glass of champagne before the meal began.

3—3 / 66

The course starts, ryotei-style, with a hassun-like spread of small bites.

8—10 / 66

First came a dressed chicken-breast dish, then daikon, tsukune, and satsumaage, a plate that brought oden to mind.

4—7 / 66

The satsumaage seemed to have lily bulb scattered through it.

11—13 / 66

The range of textures was lovely, and it made a fine start alongside the champagne.

Then the yakitori began in earnest, starting with shoulder and thigh (momo).

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The chicken is Mikawa aka-dori from Aichi, grilled over binchotan charcoal.

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The first bites were juicy and pleasantly springy.

17—18 / 66

I don't yet have enough yakitori under my belt to name a top five, but among everything I had eaten up to that point, this struck me as genuinely delicious.

19—21 / 66

Next came seseri (neck) and nankotsu (cartilage), both of which I ate with real pleasure.

22—23 / 66

The seseri in particular, made here with Kinsou-dori, was full of juice and springy and delicious, and the nankotsu was excellent too. It delivered the full fun of a layered texture, the crunch of cartilage against the give of the meat.

24—26 / 66

Ever since, I've made a point of checking whether nankotsu is on offer whenever I visit a yakitori-ya.

After the excellent nankotsu came ebi-imo. Ebi-imo (海老芋) is a Kyoto heirloom vegetable, a type of taro grown by hilling soil over it again and again until it curves into a shrimp-like shape with matching stripes, which is where the name comes from. The flesh is fine-grained and densely creamy, and because it holds together through long simmering it is a prized ingredient in ryotei braises, at its best in the depths of winter from November to January. It is also a vegetable I had eaten to the point of weariness over the course of that winter in Japan, and perhaps for that reason this one struck me as so-so.

27—29 / 66

Momoriku followed. It had been seasoned, and it was ordinary.

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I'm a great lover of specialty cuts and offal, and the first of the organ pieces was leba (liver). The surface felt a touch dry, but the inside was rich and soft, almost like a dense cheese in texture, and what I liked was that there was no off odor.

35—36 / 66

Among the dishes, duck (kamo) arrived with yuzu and a betkon sauce over a bed of rice.

37—37 / 66

The duck's texture and the grilling were very good. What disappointed me slightly was that the smokiness I had enjoyed in the other dishes and in the yakitori didn't come through in this duck, and the sauce seemed to bury the flavor a little.

38—41 / 66

The Kagoshima eggplant that came next, in particular, carried such a lovely smokiness in its skin that it made me wish the duck had been given a little more smoke of its own.

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Later in the course came the house's signature tsukune, which was also delicious. Its center was left fairly rare, a so-called raw tsukune, which made it soft and very good.

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After that, a grilled button mushroom was topped with what amounted to a thick reduction of mushroom soup, then finished with raw mushroom grated over the top.

50—51 / 66

A combination of the same ingredient in different guises, it was direct and layered in texture, and I liked it.

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Last came the house's signature tebasaki (chicken wing), stuffed with carrot. By this point, though, I had eaten so many excellent things that this take on tebasaki landed with less impact than I had hoped.

54—56 / 66

I half expected to be asked about additional orders at this stage, but the meal moved straight to the clay-pot rice and ended.

57—57 / 66

None of the additional offal I had been hoping for appeared, and while the yakitori was delicious, this left me wanting. The composition felt a little monotonous, and the range didn't seem especially wide.

The clay-pot rice, a seseri version, didn't move me much, though it was tasty.

58—63 / 66

From the second bowl on, a raw egg was added on top, which I enjoyed.

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For dessert, the sauce of mitarashi dango had been turned into a powder and served with ice cream, and tasting the powder on its own, it tasted like Chapagetti, the well-known Korean instant noodle.

64—66 / 66

I wondered why, and I suspect it comes down to a similar flavor structure. Eaten together with the ice cream, that resemblance was a curious thing.

One of Aramaki's strengths is that it's a good place to drink. I started with a glass of champagne, then had a glass each of Amaneko (亜麻猫) and Colors (カラーズ) from Akita's Aramasa (新政). Amaneko is one of Aramasa's experimental bottlings: alongside the usual yellow koji for sake, it uses the white koji of shochu, which gives it a citric, distinctly un-sake-like acidity. Brewed from Sake Komachi rice in wooden vats with the No. 6 yeast, it weaves aromas of citrus, apple, and honey through a grapefruit-peel sharpness and a herbal bitterness.

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Colors is the line that captures the character of a single rice variety through pasteurization, and the one I had this evening was the Ash (アッシュ, 水墨), its label reading 2023 and Kame no O (亀の尾). Kame no O is a legendary heirloom rice, selected in the Shonai region of Yamagata in the Meiji era and a genetic ancestor of many of eastern Japan's rices.

15—15 / 66

I finished with Juyondai (十四代), and the bill came to 22,000 yen in all. Given what sushi and fine dining cost these days, I find yakitori prices remarkably good value. With a good range of sake, wine, and whisky on hand, it was easy to drink well alongside the skewers.

Of the sakes, Juyondai Bessen Morohaku (十四代 別撰諸白) was the most delicious. It is a junmai daiginjo brewed by Takagi Shuzo in Yamagata, milling Banshu special-A Yamada Nishiki down to 45 percent, with an elegant nose that recalls La France pear, lychee, and flowers, and a fine balance of sweetness, acidity, and umami. Juyondai takes its name from the fact that the head of the house is the fourteenth-generation Takagi, and it is a hard-to-find premium label.

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Looking into it, this is a fairly high-end line, and a glass ran somewhere around 2,000 to 3,000 yen, which I think is fair for what it is. This is just my own view, but with yakitori I find highballs and sours pair best, and after those, red wine works better than sake.

This is just my own view, but with yakitori I find highballs and sours pair best, and after those, red wine works better than sake.

My one reservation is that the cooked dishes felt a little weak. The course is 12,000 yen, which isn't high, so that has to be taken into account, but the yakitori was far more delicious than the dishes. Of the places I've been, it was Torisho Ishii Hina (鳥匠いし井 ひな) whose cooked dishes left the strongest impression.

Japan's counter restaurants make the reservation difficulty of other countries look almost quaint. Many of those hardest-to-book places are indeed delicious, but there are also plenty that are easy to get into and still excellent. When it comes to yakitori, I think Aramaki is one of those cases. Even if your foothold in Japan's reservation systems and networks isn't yet deep, if you want a delicious yakitori meal, I'd encourage you to consider this one.