Anyone been yet?
Might be the guinea pig and try next friday
The last great yakitori experience I had was Yakitori Tsuta in San Diego which was pretty stellar for the price so that’ll be hard to top
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Is this where Harajuku Taproom used to be?
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Yep! Looks like they did quite the remodel!
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Did their omakase this evening. Liked it a lot. Toto Neorest in da house.
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oooooh tell us more! what kinda dishes/how many we talking
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32.6k followers, they literally just opened, and they only get a handful of comments on each post. My mind jumps to the restaurant purchasing fake/bot followers…anyone have an alternate explanation? I did consider that it could have been the former Harajuku Taproom page which they edited, but nope, Harajuku had their own Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/harajukutaproomla/)
That said, I don’t actually care, if it’s good i’ll check it out regardless of sketchy social media practices.
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The first post on their insta is from 2023, so they could have a bit of a built in following.
That is a possible explanation, but not a plausible explanation. If they had 32.6k real people following them, they would be getting more than a handful of comments per post. I know people who have purchased fake followers*, and this is exactly what it looks like - high follower counts, low actual engagement on posts.
*For the record, I am not alluding to myself. I don’t post on social media at all, personally or professionally.
I had a really chaotic omakase here last week! Omakase was priced at $120, which I thought was a little expensive for yakitori. However, it was over 12 bites. The meal itself took over 2.5 hours - the kitchen was extremely chaotic with only one binchotan grill going. The shokunin was very nice though and I generally appreciated his cooking. A few highlights:
Seseri with Tokyo negi - crunchy, herbaceous, spicy, and fatty.
Thigh with daikon oroshi - earthy, smoky, and sweet.
Grilled summer vegetables (okra, bell peppers, eggplant) marinated in dashi - this was one of my favorite appetizers in recent memory. Would have ordered two if I had dined a la carte.
Sashimi with hamo, kinmedai, and madai. I was actually quite impressed with the sashimi (and its accoutrements, including shisho flowers, garlic chives, and thinly sliced onions) and told the chef, and he mentioned that he has a trained sushi chef working in the back. However, the sushi chef doesn’t get to do a lot of fish in a yakitori restaurant.
Gingko nuts that the chef smuggled here from his family’s house in Tokyo. This was probably my favorite skewer of the night.
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That looks like my kind meal! Quite a variety, wow
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