Yakitori: The Art of Skewered Chicken — and Standing at a Japanese Bar
By Yoshi | Japan Unveiled
There is a specific type of establishment in Japan — found most commonly in the narrow streets and alleys beneath elevated railway tracks in Tokyo, but present in various forms in virtually every Japanese city — that I want you to understand before I tell you about the food it serves.
The establishment is small. Typically six to twelve seats at a counter, sometimes a few stools along the wall, occasionally a couple of very small tables with very low ceilings above them. The ventilation is inadequate and the smoke from the charcoal grill behind the counter fills the room with a specific smell — charcoal, chicken fat, caramelised sauce — that accumulates in your clothes during the evening and that you will smell on your jacket the next morning when you remember what a good time you had.
The chef — who is also, in smaller establishments, the owner — stands behind the counter at the grill, skewering, turning, seasoning, and serving with the specific economy of motion that comes from performing the same tasks in the same small space for many years. Beer arrives quickly. The first skewers arrive shortly after.
This is the yakitori-ya — the yakitori restaurant — and it is one of the most specifically, most pleasurably Japanese eating environments available to anyone who wants to understand what Japanese people actually eat for dinner.
What Yakitori Is
Yakitori (焼き鳥) — the characters mean “grilled bird” — is, in its broadest definition, grilled chicken skewers. In practice, it is considerably more specific and considerably more interesting than this description suggests.
The remarkable thing about yakitori is its approach to the whole chicken. Where most culinary traditions use the chicken primarily for its breast and thigh meat, treating other parts as secondary or as stock material, yakitori treats every edible part of the chicken as a distinct and specific ingredient with its own flavour characteristics, its own appropriate preparation, and its own dedicated fans.
Walking through a yakitori menu is an education in chicken anatomy. The familiar and the unfamiliar exist alongside each other without hierarchy. The chicken breast skewer (sasami) sits on the same menu as the chicken heart (hatsu), the chicken liver (reba), the chicken skin (kawa), the neck meat (seseri), the oyster (sori), the tail (bonjiri), the gizzard (sunagimo), and various other parts that most Western culinary traditions would either discard or process beyond recognition.
This whole-animal approach to the chicken is not novelty for its own sake. It reflects a specific culinary philosophy — that every part of the animal has value and deserves to be prepared in the way that best expresses its specific qualities — that has produced a tradition in which eating chicken heart or chicken skin is not unusual or adventurous but simply correct.
The Two Seasonings: Tare and Shio
Every yakitori order involves a fundamental choice: tare or shio.
Tare (タレ) is the sauce — a thick, sweet-savoury glaze made from soy sauce, mirin, sake, and sugar, reduced to a syrupy consistency and applied to the skewer repeatedly during grilling. Each application of tare caramelises slightly in the heat of the grill, building up layers of flavour that accumulate with each coating. The result is a skewer with a glossy, dark coating that is simultaneously sweet, savoury, and slightly smoky from the caramelisation.
Shio (塩) is salt — seasoned with coarse salt rather than sauce, allowing the natural flavour of the specific part being grilled to come forward without the complexity and sweetness of the tare. The shio preparation is cleaner and more direct; it reveals the specific character of each part more clearly than the tare, which adds its own layer of flavour over whatever it coats.
The general principle: richer, fattier parts (skin, tail, oyster) benefit from the shio treatment, which cuts through the fat without adding additional sweetness. Leaner parts (breast, some vegetables) can handle the tare, which adds the richness that the ingredient lacks.
The reality: most experienced yakitori eaters order some of each, applying the seasoning that they feel will best complement each specific piece. Asking the chef for their recommendation — osusume wa tare desu ka, shio desu ka? — is always appropriate and typically produces useful guidance.
The Essential Parts: A Guide to the Menu
Momo (もも) — Thigh The most popular yakitori cut and the correct starting point for anyone new to the style. The thigh has enough fat to stay moist during grilling, enough flavour to be interesting without being challenging, and a familiar texture that provides a reference point against which the more unusual parts can be understood. Order it first, in whichever seasoning you prefer.
Negima (ねぎま) — Thigh with Green Onion Alternating pieces of chicken thigh and thick sections of green onion (negi), grilled together so that the onion takes on the chicken’s fat and the chicken takes on the onion’s sweetness. One of the most classical yakitori preparations and one of the most satisfying — the contrast between the chicken and the softened, slightly charred onion is specifically pleasing.
Tsukune (つくね) — Chicken Meatball Ground chicken formed into oval shapes around a skewer and grilled, typically served with a raw egg yolk for dipping. The texture is soft compared to the whole-meat skewers, and the flavour — which can include ginger, green onion, and other aromatics mixed into the ground chicken — is more complex and more uniformly distributed. The egg yolk dip enriches each bite. One of the most beloved yakitori preparations.
Kawa (皮) — Skin Chicken skin, folded and skewered so that multiple layers are grilled simultaneously, producing a piece that is simultaneously crispy at the outer edges and yielding in the middle, rich with rendered fat, and intensely flavoured with the specific taste of grilled chicken fat. The kawa is not for people who are avoiding fat. It is for people who understand that well-prepared fat is one of the most satisfying flavours available. Order it with shio.
Seseri (せせり) — Neck Meat The meat from around the chicken’s neck — well-exercised, therefore slightly chewy, and with a specific deep flavour that reflects the muscle’s activity. The seseri has a richness and complexity that the thigh does not have, and the slight chewiness is considered a virtue by yakitori enthusiasts who find the thigh’s relative tenderness less interesting.
Reba (レバー) — Liver Chicken liver, the most iron-forward and most specifically offal-tasting of the standard yakitori parts. The best chicken liver yakitori is slightly pink in the centre — just cooked, not raw, but not overcooked into the chalky greyness that liver becomes when it is treated without care. The tare preparation works well for liver, providing sweetness that complements the liver’s mineral depth.
Hatsu (ハツ) — Heart Chicken heart, split and flattened on the skewer, grilling in a few minutes to a tender, slightly chewy, intensely flavoured result. The heart has a specific mineral quality that is different from any other chicken part and that is deeply satisfying to the people who appreciate it. It is often the favourite part of the most experienced yakitori eaters.
Sunagimo (砂肝) — Gizzard The gizzard — the muscular organ that grinds food in the chicken’s digestive system — is the chewiest of the yakitori parts and the one that requires the most adjustment for people unfamiliar with it. When prepared well, the gizzard has a specific pleasant crunch that is unlike any other texture in the yakitori repertoire. It is an acquired quality of preference, but it is worth acquiring.
Bonjiri (ぼんじり) — Tail The parson’s nose, the pope’s nose — the fatty little tail piece that is one of the most intensely flavoured and most debated of yakitori cuts. The bonjiri is almost entirely fat, and during grilling it renders into a crispy-exterior, yielding-interior piece that is more flavour than substance. It is beloved by yakitori enthusiasts and divisive in the way that any intensely flavoured, intensely fatty food is divisive.
Charcoal vs. Electric: The Grilling Debate
The specific debate in yakitori culture that generates the most heat (pun available but not intended) is the question of charcoal versus electric or gas grilling.
Binchotan (備長炭) — the high-quality white charcoal produced from specific oak varieties in the Wakayama Prefecture region — is the preferred fuel for serious yakitori restaurants. Binchotan burns at a very high and consistent temperature, produces minimal visible smoke (the charcoal itself burns efficiently), and imparts a specific smokiness to the food being grilled that is considered essential to the authentic yakitori experience.
The radiant heat of binchotan grilling — the direct infrared heat from the glowing charcoal surface — produces a specific searing effect on the exterior of the skewer while the interior cooks from the heat that penetrates through the meat. This dual cooking mechanism — searing exterior, conducting interior — is what produces the specific texture of well-grilled yakitori: crisp and slightly charred on the outside, juicy and tender inside.
Electric and gas grilling produces heat differently — more consistently in some respects, but without the specific smokiness and without the specific searing mechanism of charcoal. The technical difference in the finished product is real and perceptible to experienced yakitori eaters. The practical difference for a casual yakitori dinner is less significant.
Establishments that use binchotan typically indicate this in their marketing — it is a selling point worth noting when choosing where to eat.
The Standing Bar: Tachinomi Yakitori
A specific form of yakitori experience that I want to describe because it is one of the most quintessentially Japanese eating experiences available, and one that most guidebooks ignore in favour of more sit-down options.
Tachinomi (立ち飲み) — standing drinking — is the practice of eating and drinking at a bar without seating, standing at a counter or at chest-height shelves that serve as surfaces for drinks and food. Tachinomi yakitori establishments — typically tiny, typically inexpensive, typically found near train stations — serve yakitori at counter height to standing customers.
The tachinomi yakitori experience: you order beer and a selection of skewers, you stand at the counter, you eat and drink and possibly talk to the people next to you, and you leave when you are done. The entire experience from entry to exit may be forty-five minutes. The cost may be 1,500 to 2,500 yen per person including drinks.
This format — brief, inexpensive, casual, specific — is one of the ways that Japanese working adults decompress between work and home. The standing position enforces a certain brevity: you are not settling in for a long evening, you are having a beer and a few skewers and then continuing your journey. The brevity is the point.
For visitors to Japan who want to experience the most everyday, most unselfconscious version of yakitori culture, the tachinomi yakitori-ya is worth seeking out.
— Yoshi 🍢 Central Japan, 2026
Enjoyed this? You might also like: “Izakaya Ordering Guide: How to Navigate a Japanese Pub Like a Local” and “Tonkatsu: Japan’s Crispy Pork Cutlet” — both available on Japan Unveiled.
