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.