Tori-jyaa honmaru

Neighborhood: Shinjuku
Style: Japanese
Kanji name: 鶏じゃあ本丸
Website: http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g808901/

So, Sam, Kathleen, Cliff, and I were looking for somewhere to eat in Shinjuku and a street busker came up and convinced us to try Tori-jyaa Honmaru. He asked me if I could speak Japanese, and my reply was convincing enough for him to radio ahead, "gaijin da kedo nihongo mo daijyoubu" ("They're foreigners, but Japanese is also OK").

It turned out pretty well! It's a take-off-your-shoes place, and like a lot of group-oriented restaurants, they have the hole in the floor so that you sit on a tatami but in fact your feet are below "ground" level (honesty compells me to admit I like this a lot better than actually sitting on tatami).

They specialize in keichan-yaki, which I hadn't heard of before. It's a fun kind of cook-at-your-table meal (the Japanese have a bunch of these) where they bring the gas-fired griddle to your table, but it has a spherical bulge in the middle. They put a piece of waxed paper over that, then there's a bunch of vegatables and meat that go on the paper, along with sauce. It looks like the way it works is that the sauce keeps the paper from burning long enough to cook everything, and it definitely made for some yummy food.

We tried a bunch of other dishes as well, not all of them redily identifiable (I managed to avoid informing Sam and Kathleen, and especially Cliff, that one of the dishes was jellyfish). We also tried a couple sakes, and the one we liked we asked the name of. This is where my Japanese hit its limits -- we couldn't exactly make out the reply, but we thought he repeated "Swiss Kick". After a bit of research I decided it was actually "kikyuuyoi" - the more common reading of the Kanji for yoi is "sui", so the waiter was actually repeating "kikyuusui".

Recommended! Fun, even if it's not a gourmet experience.