Review: Yakitori Totto

A skewer of grilled chicken oysters.

This blog post might be titled, "The Review that Never Got Written: Yakitori Totto." I've had all these photographs hanging around for a week now and have been focusing so intently on other things that I just haven't written much about the restaurant.

Yakitori Totto is a yakitori restaurant, a Japanese style of street foods, mostly grilled meats on sticks. Each piece costs somewhere around $2-$4, so a small group of people can try literally dozens of items.

Yakitori Totto is chicken-centric, and the prize piece on any chicken is the oyster, which is not the anus exactly, as many people assume, but is a small piece of dark meat attached to the thigh and backbone (see diagram).



Rather than give a play-by-play review, I'd like to just share some photos and say Yakitori Totto was very good. The atmosphere is casual, and prices are flexible, as you can order heavily or lightly. I have no complaints, and I could nit-pick if it were a restaurant with loftier aspirations, but it's not.


Fried squid pieces.


Battered and deep fried soft tofu.


Asparagus pieces wrapped tightly in chicken skin.


Shishisto peppers with fluttering bonito flakes.


Salt and pepper sea scallops (right) and gyoza (left).


Chicken meatball, highly recommended.


Smelt served with lemon.


Seaweed salad, highly recommended, and out of focus at right are cold chopped tuna livers served with blobs of cream cheese.


Chicken with scallions.


Ground spiced chicken stuffed in hot shishisto peppers, highly recommended.