くろ﨑

The chef and owner at the grill

Yu Kurosaki seasons for the fire as chef-owner of Yakitori Kurosaki in Tokyo, where the counter keeps his hands in full view. He also carries the title of Executive Chef, so the work has little distance between authorship and service: the person who sets the direction also stands at the station. The restaurant’s name does not point to a broad Japanese kitchen. It points to yakitori, and to Kurosaki’s own measure of it.

Before opening under his own name, Kurosaki spent eight years in the Torishiki lineage, training until September 2022. That apprenticeship matters here because yakitori gives no cover to a loose hand. Butchery, seasoning, the order of the skewers, and the moment a piece leaves the heat all sit inside the same discipline. Kurosaki later opened in Nakameguro, then relocated the restaurant to Shirokanedai in October 2023, a quieter pocket of Minato-ku. The move did not widen the format. It kept the work close, with Yu Kurosaki still tied to the grill, the room, and the identity of the house.

A 16-course counter built around chicken

The menu runs as a 16-course omakase, which gives Kurosaki control over pacing in the way yakitori requires. A skewer is not held for convenience. It moves when the meat, fat, salt, and heat have arrived at the same point. Date-dori chicken from Tohoku forms the base of the cooking, with Iwate named in the restaurant’s sourcing, and the program supplements it with rare regional breeds and selected vegetables.

That structure lets the meal move through chicken as a material rather than as a single flavor. White meat, fattier cuts, organ pieces, and vegetable courses each ask for a different distance from the heat and a different finish. At the bench, the sequence is part of the method: the guest receives each piece when the chef decides it has crossed from raw ingredient into finished skewer.

Six seats and no spare theatre

The room is built around a six-seat counter, small enough that the pass and the dining room nearly collapse into one another. In that scale, the usual restaurant buffers fall away. Guests see the skewer before it arrives, the fire before the plate, the chef before the explanation. The counter is not decoration here. It is the working edge of the restaurant.

Shirokanedai helps set the tempo. The address sits away from Tokyo’s heavier dining traffic, and the restaurant’s discouragement of photography keeps attention on the meal rather than the image of it. For yakitori, that choice has weight. The craft happens in short intervals, and a skewer loses its point quickly. Kurosaki’s format asks the room to stay with the heat, the timing, and the Date-dori chicken.