Yakitori at Kushiwakamaru, Naka Meguro, Tokyo

The sister highly recommended this yakitori place within walking distance from her house, but cautioned that we should try to get there as early as possible as there was always a queue, and that they refused to take reservations since it was peak (ie sakura) season. Kushiwakamaru is located just behind the Naka Meguro canal, and this was the view we had walking towards the restaurant.
We managed to get the last 2 seats!

The complimentary starter of whitebait on grated daikon, fabulous with some soy sauce drizzled over.
View from our seat- the entire place was packed, and the only drawback was the smoke from nearby tables.

We ordered quite a number of different things - this was the first assortment to arrive.

We had beautifully grilled chicken wings, probably the best ever. They were cooked to perfection, crispy on the outside (and non-oily), and juicy and well-cooked on the inside.

Normal yakitoro with sticks of negi in between. This was beautiful too. Unlike other places where they rely too much on sweet sauce to mask the meat, the fresh chicken flavours came out and it was such a refreshing change from eating yakitori with more sauce than meat.

Another view of the wings

I love chicken cartilege, or nankotsu. And this was done so well.

Chicken breast with mentaiko
They do their chicken breast rare on the inside to show you how fresh the meat is. Probably a once-in-a-lifetime event for me since I don't really fancy raw chicken - it was soft and felt kinda weird.

We also had beef skewers
Ooh these were lovely - cherry tomatoes wrapped with bacon. Little squirty things that were super juicy.

The husband, who normally doesn't like chicken wings, ordered another serve cos he liked it so much. I ordered a kurobota pork skewer to try it out - lovely.Another angle To round off the meal, I had a mentaiko chazuke
This was pretty normal, nothing outstanding.

The husband had mochi wrapped in bacon. He said this was pretty good...I was too stuffed to eat anymore.
This was the queue by the time we finished dinner.
And the hanami on the way back was a perfect ending to a perfect meal : )What the canal looks like during the day.

The name card of the shop, for reference.

Cooking by the sister

Various bits and pieces of stuff that the sister fed us: this was some dried fish fin that was grilled in the toaster oven that was super yummy and fragrant.

The sister's carbonara pasta on a dark and stormy night - the day the typhoon hit Tokyo.

Crab cakes with salsa. Yum.

Filled with crab and fish.

Lovely (possibly GM) Japanese strawberries, or ichigo

Vongole pasta with asari on another night

A home-made salad of lady's fingers and tomatoes

Dipped in a coconut cream sauce

Mentaiko pasta

Pigs ears

On our final night in Tokyo, the sister was nice enough to prepare a wonderful farewell sukiyaki meal at home for us before we headed to Haneda. This was similar to our 2010 NYE meal at her place but a lot less elaborate.
The pot is heated up and oiled with beef fat

Then the spring onions and onions go in

Check out the marbling

In the beef goes

And it cooks

Almost there

Ta da!

Mochi - fantastic with the beef juices

Everything else in the pot

Veggies at the end

Big prawn noodles from Kok Sen Coffeeshop

We spent $30 on this bowl of 大虾粗米粉 at Kok Sen coffeeshop along Keong Saik Rd which more than fed the 2 of us. Easily one of the most fragrant bowls of prawn noodles ever, without the soya sauce flavouring, and extremely rich in flavour with lots of hae bee and chilli.

Lemon, butter and garlic pasta with seafood

We interrupt the series of Tokyo postings to bring you the latest home-cooked food by the MIL. We both swear by the Periplus recipe books which are so simple, so good, so reliable and so cheap. I've cooked an awesome lamb shank pasta before from the book - which i probably should write a post on - and I can completely say with confidence that these $5 books are great value.

She used the lemon and garlic pasta recipe and improvised it by addingseafood cooked in butter and garlic. She used a mixture of salmon steaks, squid, prawns and clams, and tossed the pasta in a garlic butter sauce with sun-dried tomato and rocket leaves, with grated lemon zest and lemon juice sprinked on top. So simple and so yummy.

All the seafood - each fried separately

The clams were super fresh

The squid - there wasn't quite enough methinks

Sundried tomato in olive oil

After mixing with the sundried tomato and arugula leaves

A close-up - I was surprised how good the lemon zest was

An elevation : )