Seafood at Uroko

After having scanned hundreds of eateries in Japan during my pre-vacation research, this was the one restaurant I absolutely had to visit. Conveniently for us, it is located a stone’s throw from the Nakano station–right on the way back to Shinjuku from Mitaka, where we just spent the late afternoon visiting with our friend, Totoro.

From the outside, the corner shop looks part fish market, part pottery studio with a kiln a-blazing, but we get quickly whisked into the dining room with zashiki-style seating and (mercifully, for me) wells for legs. And oh yeah, this means shoes off before your feet go into the well.

The dude-waiter pulls several white-hot cooking stones from the kiln–I’m pretty sure that these are ceramic posts used to support the shelves that hold pottery during firing–covering the bottom of the hibachi that he brings to the table. Using these stones means that there is no problem of ashes flying when the food starts to drip. A wire grate over the stones provides the cooking surface.

Our order for table grilling: one tuna collar, two tuna cheeks, two sardines, one black abalone, two turban shells (sazae), four clams, three gigantic oysters, two scallops, two skewers of squid legs. The tuna collar takes the longest to cook, and it goes on the grill first. The sazae and abalone go on, shell side down–and yes, they are still alive. A soy-based cooking sauce is added to the shellfish and the waiting staff keeps a watchful eye on our food to make sure that we don’t overcook the abalone (which would be a tragedy!). The oysters come open, but the other bivalves (clams and scallops) cook in their shells. The adductor muscle detaches first from the down side because of their more direct exposure to the heat, so after the valves open they can be flipped and the special sauce added while the other side cooks a bit.

The food at this place is seriously, ridiculously, insanely good.