📍 Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
My absolute favourite place in Tokyo!
Golden Gai is a street in Shinjuku, popular for it’s night eats of beer and yakitori (skewers).
In the busy streets of Shinjuku, Golden Gai itself is small and easy to miss, so look out for the bright green sign with yellow wordings on it!
With narrow alleyways, the walking route is tight but you feel as if you’re a local when exploring these places!
Tons and tons of bars situated one after another, it’s hard to pick one! The smell of skewers/yakitori fuels the air within the streets of Golden Gai, it was heavenly~
Randomly picking one, we settled for their upstairs seating area which had air conditioning, which helped since it was sooo hot in Tokyo..
Each person is required to order a drink and a plate of skewers. They had mostly alcohol options but also had non-alcoholic options like tea and coke. Each plate of skewers came with 5 sticks each and costs ¥500. You can mix and match any skewer option for your 5.
They gave us English menus which was great and this spot also had vegetable skewer options too! With their pork options being the most diverse, they also had chicken and some side dishes which were at an extra cost.
When I mention most diverse, as in they offered pork heart, pork intestine, pork liver and some other ones like womb, tongue, cartilage… yep. Some people might be turned off/not used to the variations of meat choices.
Pork meat was good, and I also tried pork intestine and heart, along with a few others just to gauge the test. Intestine was good and super chewy, whereas heart was a bit more tough than regular meat. But I enjoyed Pork Tongue the best, it just had a much flavourful taste and texture.
Grilled vegetables doesn’t taste as good as I had hoped, the mushrooms seemed soggy whereas the green onions didn’t have taste after grilling.. But all the meat options were chewy, fresh and hot
The sauce that they used here was pretty good, and the service was prompt and fast. The workers here actually spoke Mandarin to each other, so I wasn’t sure if this place was authentically Japanese yakitori… Either way, the food here was really good. They did close around 11pm, but I’m not sure if it’s this restaurant in particular or all the bars here close at the same time.
Golden Gai is definitely an experience for those who want to view the mini bars of Tokyo. There was a washroom within the streets of Golden Gai, but trust me when I say that it is horrrrrrrible and I wished I had gone to the washroom before coming here.
Still, I recommend coming here just to experience a local Tokyo nightlife, and I’m still raving about how good the skewers/yakitori were until this day.
Till next time, ♥
