Zakkushi

A couple of friends and I got together for our bonenkai, our forget-the-year-party this weekend and stuffed our faces over a set menu that was deceptively filling.  Plus we got a bit liquored up along the way, after all, it is an izakaya!

Our set meal started off with a tofu dish, not one of my favourite dishes as it had no meat in it, but having a hearty meal wasn't the point of our visit.  It turned out be a nice light way to get started.  The tofu wasn't the run-of-the-mill packaged stuff, this tofu was probably of good grade and it just had a different taste and texture to it.

Of course what kind of beer or sake could be properly consumed without edamame?

The gomae here is a bit different than most other places.  Yes, there was some sort of sesame sauce in there, even a few sesame seeds, but what makes Zakkushi's gomae different is the sauce.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they use a pit of ponzu in it to give it some tartness.....anyway, it's good.

Ah, the yakitori, Zakkushi's bread and butter.  The charcoal flavour is just that much better than gas grilled.  Yeah, it's not healthy, but it tastes great, so just don't eat it everyday.

Crunchy soba salad (not really sure what it was actually called) was surpisingly good and was a nice refresher half-way through our meal.

More skewers!  The beef was garnished with daikon oroshi (mizore - shredded daikon seasoned with ponzu)

The beef was good, nice and rare.

P-toro, my all-time favourite dish at Zakkushi - how can you go wrong with pork belly?  I could have eaten this all night.

The ebi-mayo came on a skewer.  Not sure if it was just the way they do it now, or was it because of the set dinner.  Anyway, it was good...just wish I had more!

Bacon-wrapped asparagus.  The p-toro really stole the thunder from these, which are normally quite good.

Chicken karage, with some daikon orishi for dip.

The ahi-tuna salad wasn't the last item on our set menu (it was yaki udon), but it's the last picture because my camera ran out of batteries.  Anwyay, the Ahi Tuna Salad was good overall but you gotta eat it the right way.  The greens had a lot of flavour but the tuna was just seared and unseasoned.  I think you're supposed to mix up the tuna and the salad and eat it together, but we didn't quite figure that out because of the way it was plated. 

The place was packed this night, and there were people waiting to be seated all night.  The only downside for this particular night was really that they were understaffed.  Only two servers, and I think one of them was quite new.  They didn't have time to clear the dishes before bringing new ones so it got cluttered at times, but it was okay, I was too buzzed to care.