Yakiniku Toraji Ginza 6chome

Korean BBQ Japanese style in Ginza. Tricky to find this place on the fourth floor as they don’t have a sign out front in English and we couldn’t match up any of the Kanji among the myriad of restaurant signs. We ended up just asking someone on the street who pointed us to the right doorway and floor.
Our hotel concierge made us a dinner reservation here for 6pm on a Saturday but we didn’t need one. We had the place to ourselves which meant we got super personalized service. Good thing as we didn’t know what to do or how to cook everything. They offer regular tables (shoes on) or Japanese style (shoes off). We picked the latter. When in Rome… Our table had a circular grill with coals with a thin grate on it. I was a little worried about the grill throwing off a lot of heat after our scorching day in the Tokyo afternoon heat but no worries.
To make things easy they have a reasonably priced package for tourists that includes top grades of meat, salad, noodles and dessert. We also ordered a couple of draft beers served in nice copper «glasses» that kept them cold. We had no trouble using English here despite the upfront signage issue.
To start things off, you are given an over-​sized bib to tie around your neck. At first I thought it was overkill but by the end of my meal it had several splotches on it so job well done there. Up first was two pieces of lightly seared beef on rice. Beef sushi? It was surprisingly good whatever it is called. Along with it they served us a small tray of kimchi that was also quite tasty. Next up a more traditional style mixed salad.
Now the beef started showing up by the tray full. They were grouped in either a salt group or a sweet soy group. All nicely presented with flowers and pre-​seasoned ready to cook. Two or three times our cooking grate was swapped out for a fresh one when switching say from salt to sweet meats. One course was even cooked on a magnolia leaf with miso sauce while another one was served with a raw egg in a bowl which they called sukiyaki style. Despite a little apprehension around eating raw eggs, we went for it and it was fabulous. We kept some of the egg around for later courses to dip our meat in. Yummy.
After we were finished cooking all the meats, we got our choice of a noodle dish. My wife picked a traditional cold noodle dish while I selected a spicy hot bowl of noodles. Both were excellent and both filled us up and we couldn’t finish them. For dessert we had something in between flan and crème brûlée with some fruit. Quite delicious and a perfect end to our meal.
Service the entire night was super attentive and they explained each step of the process. We really had a great time along with our great meal.