So…I love yakitori. There’s no doubting that. It all started with Yardbird in Hong Kong, followed by Yardbird in Sydney (!) and other amazing yakitori places like Yakitori Yurippi in Crows Nest. There’s something about the small skewers that appeals to me, as well as the other small side dishes that you can get. Everything is super tasty, but you don’t have to have a huge portion of anything! This is coming from the girl who loves high tea and bento boxes. I think you can see a trend.
There’s been quite a bit of hype around YAKITORI JIN – apparently it’s where all the local Japanese folk go to. That’s how you know it’s going to be good, of course, but also no fuss and straight-forward. That’s exactly how we found the restaurant on a cold, wintry and windy night as we wandered along Ramsey Street in Haberfield.
We started off with the Fresh Cabbage (Marinated with Shio Konbu & Sesame oil) ($8) – but we didn’t realise that they also give you a small, complimentary portion of cabbage! So we ended up with double cabbage. I would definitely recommend getting some sort of salad to balance out the grilled meat flavours.
The menu at YAKITORI JIN is quite big, so we decided to go with the Omakase (6 pieces, chef’s selection) ($24) to give us a taste of everything. The skewer portion sizes are also quite big so we found it just the right amount, allowing us to pick other things from the menu too. That’s the dilemma I always have at yakitori places. Yes, I do want all the skewers. But there are also so many great other side dishes I want to try!
The omakase gave us three chicken skewers and three vegetable skewers. I loved the okra in particular, but not so sure about the tomato and cheese…
The two other dishes we ordered were Kani Tenshin Han – (Thickened chicken soup with Alaskan king crab meat on the bowl of rice) ($29) and Dashimaki Tamago (Egg omlette with Grated white radish) ($14). To be honest, we were just curious what the Kani Tenshin Han would be like. Soup but with rice? It ended up being a huge portion and the perfect winter meal. I could just have this by itself for dinner!
I also couldn’t go past the Dashimaki Tamago of course. The way the Japanese make their omelettes is just great! I also like to do a little mental comparison between all the restaurants at which I’ve had the omelettes, to see which one is the most fluffy. This one was quite good, but it was also quite large. By that I mean that usually the omelette is cut up into smaller pieces, but this one was quite wide and required a few bites.
If it’s your first time heading to YAKITORI JIN I would definitely get the omakase. But if you’re a veteran yakitori consumer then definitely choose the cuts that you prefer the most. There’s a few negative things I wanted to point out. The service really wasn’t great. There were only two waitresses who were constantly running around, and kept missing us as we tried to order. In fact, they walked past us three times saying they would take our order, but then kept missing us. We also found a hair in the cabbage…I know – this happens. But it still marred our experience somewhat. Of course, all of this may have changed as we went some months ago – so please let me know what your experience is like!
YAKITORI JIN
101 RAMSAY STREET
HABERFIELD, SYDNEY
http://torijin.com.au/
