Metroman found this one-star Michelin star yakitori restaurant called Bird Land - apparently the only such restaurant with a star - and asked us for dinner. It turns out the restaurant is in the same train station place as the famed sushi joint, Jiro, that we had visited a few days earlier.
The restaurant is composed of a giant bar area, with a few small tables on the back side. Since we were a group of 5, we were seated at one of the tables.
Each person had to choose from a set menu, either costing ¥6,300 or ¥8,400. Lingon and I chose the smaller menu (some of the dishes were different too), while the rest seemed hungry and chose the larger menu.
The menu was as follows:
Today's assorted appetizers
Chicken liver pate (which we substituted and got some peppers)
Today's 8 kinds of yakitori (fillet on wasabi, liver, meatball, leg meat with green onion, others)
Sansho-yaki (teriyaki chicken with Japanese spice)
Oyako-don (chicken and egg on rice)
I did some reading before the meal and read in this blog that the chickens were "free-range Okukuji shamo (gamecocks), reared in the mountains of northwest Ibaraki prefecture". I never thought I would be able to differentiate different kinds of chicken meat, but indeed the meat of our chicken was very sweet and tender. We were also given a few free dishes like the grilled cheese because the other members of our party ordered the larger meal and I think they marginally messed up on the order. Well good for us!
We had a couple of raw chicken yakitori pieces. The only other time I had that was at a yakitori restaurant, Ippuku, in Berkeley, and I was not fond of the experience. This time, for whatever reason, either the dish tasted better or my taste buds had evolved, the raw chicken was actually very delicious! A scientist friend of ours said that one out of four people would get sick from raw chicken (sadly she was the one to get sick), and on our second experience trying raw chicken Lingon and I did not get sick, so I have therefore concluded our stomach is resistant to whatever bacteria is present in raw chicken!
During our meal, we saw rather funny activities like Jiro coming out to take photos with guests, Jiro taking off his shirt, closing the restaurant up and then walking briskly with a spring in his step out of the train station, and Wada-san, the chef of Bird Land, taking a breather outside the restaurant and swinging his imaginary golf clubs.
This was a cool experience, and was not all that pricey for a Michelin starred restaurant. The chicken was really of very good quality, and I would definitely recommend for others to come check out the excellent yakitori of Wada-san!
The restaurant is composed of a giant bar area, with a few small tables on the back side. Since we were a group of 5, we were seated at one of the tables.
Each person had to choose from a set menu, either costing ¥6,300 or ¥8,400. Lingon and I chose the smaller menu (some of the dishes were different too), while the rest seemed hungry and chose the larger menu.
The menu was as follows:
Today's assorted appetizers
Chicken liver pate (which we substituted and got some peppers)
Today's 8 kinds of yakitori (fillet on wasabi, liver, meatball, leg meat with green onion, others)
Sansho-yaki (teriyaki chicken with Japanese spice)
Oyako-don (chicken and egg on rice)
I did some reading before the meal and read in this blog that the chickens were "free-range Okukuji shamo (gamecocks), reared in the mountains of northwest Ibaraki prefecture". I never thought I would be able to differentiate different kinds of chicken meat, but indeed the meat of our chicken was very sweet and tender. We were also given a few free dishes like the grilled cheese because the other members of our party ordered the larger meal and I think they marginally messed up on the order. Well good for us!
We had a couple of raw chicken yakitori pieces. The only other time I had that was at a yakitori restaurant, Ippuku, in Berkeley, and I was not fond of the experience. This time, for whatever reason, either the dish tasted better or my taste buds had evolved, the raw chicken was actually very delicious! A scientist friend of ours said that one out of four people would get sick from raw chicken (sadly she was the one to get sick), and on our second experience trying raw chicken Lingon and I did not get sick, so I have therefore concluded our stomach is resistant to whatever bacteria is present in raw chicken!
During our meal, we saw rather funny activities like Jiro coming out to take photos with guests, Jiro taking off his shirt, closing the restaurant up and then walking briskly with a spring in his step out of the train station, and Wada-san, the chef of Bird Land, taking a breather outside the restaurant and swinging his imaginary golf clubs.
This was a cool experience, and was not all that pricey for a Michelin starred restaurant. The chicken was really of very good quality, and I would definitely recommend for others to come check out the excellent yakitori of Wada-san!
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