Fugu Diaries

Warning: Hajyu is one of my favorite restaurants in Tokyo. This is not so much a review as a love letter.

Hajyu is a tiny restaurant on a busy stretch of Meiji Dori between Hiroo and Ebisu. By the time a friend of Yukari’s turned me onto it, I’d probably walked or ridden my bike by it dozens of times and never taken a second look.

The restaurant offers counter seating only. Seated at the counter, customers look out on Hajyu’s 40+ kinds of whiskey and liquers, dramatically lit from below, which provide a bright backdrop to the otherwise dark, intimate space. The only window, at the far end of the counter, has had bamboo placed outside of it, cleverly masking the otherwise dreary view of a Tokyo parking lot.

Dashi, the delicate fish-based broth that finds its way into so many Japanese dishes¹, is the focus around which Hajyu’s cooking takes shape. Like most Japanese restaurants, your best bet is to put yourself into the chef’s hands with an omakase menu. At Hajyu, though, you have to make a choice between an oden and a ryori course.

Oden is Japanese comfort food. To make oden, meat, fish or vegetables are simmered in dashi until their flavors meld. For us Western barbarians, the closest analogue would be pulling a choice bit of vegetable out of a rich minestrone soup. Eliminate everything except the delicious broth, make the vegetable pieces about the size of a golf ball, and you’ve got oden. Since oden ingredients spend hours simmering away, the quality of the dashi is absolutely paramount. Hajyu’s dashi does not disappoint.

This is not your secret Japanese grandfather’s oden cooking, however. Hajyu riffs off of both Japanese and Western traditions. A very traditional yuba² dish might be followed by a simmered, lip-smackingly sweet tomato, served with a little basil and mozarella; insalata caprese through a Japanese lens.

The ryori³ course gives Hajyu-san, the chef/owner, a little more room to play. Dashi still plays a central role in most dishes, but some of the oden “greatest hits” fall away. In the place of the simmered daikon, you might get a shrimp dumpling, while the beef oden could be swapped against a few pieces seared prime beef sushi. Some type of sashimi, either on its own or served atop a salad, is also a regular feature of the ryori course.

Desserts at Hajyu are simple, but delicious. Home-made black sesame ice cream is a personal favorite

In addition to Hajyu’s whiskey and liqeur selection, they offer a vast list of sake and shouchu (over 40 kinds of nihonshu and over 70 kinds of shouchu). The “kitchen” (an 8 feet long space behind the counter) closes around midnight, but drinks are available until the wee hours.

The crowd at Hajyu is a mixture of hip, young couples on dates and older businessmen, sometimes with scandolously young friends entow. Reservations are recommended, especially on Fridays and Saturdays. Without a reservation, your best bet is to show up a little early—say, around 6PM—since the indigenous crowd prefers to eat a bit later.

Although Hajyu-san and his charming bartender do not speak a lot of English, just practice saying “omakase”, then sit back and enjoy.

Hajyu is (was?) the great little undiscovered place that we take visiting friends. Now you can make it your own secret find too!

Details:

Hiroo 5-24-3 (map)
(03) 3447-2715 (reservations recommended, especially on weekends)
Open: Tuesday-Saturday, 6PM-2AM | Sunday 6PM-Midnight

¹ Much to the chagrin of vegetarians everywhere, dashi is made with katsuobushi, dried bonito loin. This makes it virtually impossible to eat anything in Japan if you are a pure vegetarian. To add insult to injury, Hajyu’s dashi is further fortified with chicken. In fact, they advertise their cuisine “kin no oden”, golden oden. The golden color a product, no doubt, of the chicken broth.

² Yuba is the skin that forms on the top of the soy milk when you make tofu. It sounds pretty disgusting, but it’s unbelievably delicious. Expect a future Fugu Diaries missive exploring the wonderful world of yubu and, more generally, tofu cuisine.

³ Literally, the “cooking” course.

— Patrick