Yokosuka Food Corner - Blue Street and Beyond: Hisago Yakitori

While it does not match the yakitori at Maido in Kanazawa-Bunko, I give Hisago Yakitori a thumbs up for being in Yokosuka and for providing some good yakitori in a warm and inviting setting.

Hisago Yakitori storefront

Hisago yakitori is a cozy little place about 2 blocks south of Shiori station. See the blog map tab on the main page to see the exact location. There are about 20 seats in booths and about 8 at the counter - that's it. They seem to be quite popular as several groups got turned away on a Saturday night due to lack of space.

Hisago has a good English menu making it easy to order. At least one of the workers speaks pretty good English too. The English menu had just a few inconsistencies that I noticed. It did not list the ebi (shrimp on a stick) nor did it list the tori-negi (chicken and leeks) but other than that was pretty complete. The English menus are shown below.

Everything is fairly priced. Your baseline yakitori (chicken and leeks for instance) is 150 Yen. Anything wrapped in bacon is 250 Yen. These are decent prices for yakitori.

Counter and Yakitori in cold standby

Cooking over charcoal

Taco Salad

Taco salad was the first order of business and it was very good. Adequate size but maybe a bit light compared to what you might get in the U.S. It had lettuce, avacado, cucumber, nacho chips, tomato, taco beef, and cheese.

Tomato bacon, Asparagus bacon, plum and shiso bacon

Tebasaki or Chicken wings

You really can't go wrong with anything wrapped in bacon but the tomato and asparagus wrapped in bacon were really good. The chicken wings were primarily seasoned with pepper.

Asparagus with bacon and cheese

Tori Negi - Chicken and Leeks with some Shichimi spice

The cheese on the asparagus was a disappointing American processed cheese. Of course it tasted good though! The Japanese kind of like processed cheese and really didn't come around to natural cheese until the 70s when refrigerators became common. But the processed cheese habit is hard to break and lives strong here.

Smoked Cheese

Hisago makes their own smoked cheese. Although I did not get to taste it, I heard it was good and was slightly melted inside after you slice into it.

It's possible that Hisago puts MSG on their yakitori. Next time I'll try to confirm this. There appeared to be salt, garlic seasoning, and one other (possibly MSG) seasoning added while the yakitori was cooking. Actually, I'm pretty sure it was MSG after giving it some more thought and talking to others. The crazy dreams I had that night surely did not weigh in on this conclusion. I would recommend you ask that they not put it on, and the food will be just fine without it.

There are several ways to say or write MSG in Japanese:

味の素　－　あじのもと, ajinomoto
グルタミン酸ナトリウム, gurutaminsan-natoriumu
グルタミン酸ソーダ, gurutaminsansoda

Here are some pictures of MSG for sale out in town. The most popular name seems to be ajinomoto. (Late entry: if you look closely at the grill photo above you can spot the ajinomoto bottle)