Gyu Tongue Lemon Shinjuku — Restaurant in Tokyo

During our Japan trip research and planning, we heard often about this restaurant from social media. So we decided to try it out. We made an online dinner reservation a month in advance. It was a bit difficult to make the booking; need to keep trying, don’t give up. However I found that the social media recommendation cannot be trusted 100%. We came across two bad experience from social media recommendation even though we have done several months research on restaurants, sightseeing spots etc. We all learned from life experiences and mistakes. Don’t repeat the mistakes twice will be fine.

Yakiniku Beef Tongue Lemon Shinjuku is a popular hip basement restaurant specializing in grilled beef tongue with street art wall decorations. The restaurant was small with small tables and 10 or so counter seatings. If you want to have a relaxing lunch or dinner then this restaurant is not your cup of tea. However this slight hiccup is balanced out by the perfectly grilled beef tongue (local Japanese are mostly beef tongue lovers).

You can’t miss the entrance of the restaurant cause it always has a long queue waiting outside. First you walk pass (or squeeze through) the rather long queue of anxious people waiting to get a seat; and then continue to walk down the narrow staircases leading to the small entrance of the restaurant. Once you step inside, you just feel like entering into a small world filled with lemon aroma and yakiniku smoking smell. The small restaurant had some small tables tightly packed against each other and 10 or so counter seatings facing the open kitchen. We scanned the QR code and ordered our dinner: the star dish - The thick sliced grilled ox tongue and beef set. The set included salad, clear beef tongue soup, grated radish, grilled beef tongue, Wagyu beer and rice. The ox tongue and beef were served on a chuck of wood block. Both the meat were grilled perfectly and the beef tongue was crunchy yet juicy whilst the beef was so tender that it just melted in your mouth. Also we ordered the lemonade drinks which could help to enrich the taste of the meaty ox tongue and beef. We squeezed a half lemon and poured its juice into a glass of sprinkling sweetened soda water. The frizzling sound made our appetite jetted up to a higher level. We found that the lemonade did help to refresh our taste palette especially after we consumed big chucks of meat.

For those who like salmon can order the salmon roe and raw egg rice bowl. We did not order this bowl because we came specially for the ox tongue dish and did not want to spoil our tasting experience.

If you don’t want to wait in long queue on the street or down the narrow staircase for at least over an hour then you must make an online reservation otherwise you will be greatly disappointed. I heard that the restaurant may close earlier than 11pm just because their beef tongue...

“Yakiniku Beef Tongue Lemon” is a highly rated restaurant that welcomes solo diners! Many other highly rated beef tongue restaurants have a 2-person minimum. This place is very busy so arrive early or make a reservation - otherwise, don’t even think about getting in.

The lemonade requires that you juice half a lemon into some carbonated water sweetened with syrup. It was actually quite refreshing, though too sweet for my tastes.

The thick cut beef tongue was delicious and tender. One of my four pieces was overcooked on one side, but this was otherwise very good. It’s hard to find this dish outside Japan so definitely eat it while you are here!

The A5 wagyu short rib was, as expected, meltingly tender, rich, and flavorful. My picture is missing a slice because I couldn’t help myself from eating a piece: Turns out the camera doesn’t always eat first! Dipped in the egg yolk, this was one of the most delicious bites of food you can eat in Japan.

As for the sides, I enjoyed the soup but didn’t like the curry as much; the spices were not very complex or interesting. The salad doesn’t really add anything to the mean; it seems to just be there to make you feel like you ate something healthy and to lessen your guilt of eating so much meat and rice.

There is an English menu. When I went, they were only serving their Christmas menu. That was a shame because the Christmas menu is more limited than the normal menu - and more expensive, too. Plus, everything from the Christmas menu seems to also be on the regular menu. I would have really liked to tried some of the other dishes.

Overall, I recommend coming here! Service is friendly and at least one of the waitresses speaks very fluent English. All menus have...

What a bad experience for the dinner. Great food but poor service at reception.

We had a booking at 8pm and arrived 10 minutes before the time. Tons of people stuck outside the door which cause complication to me. The restaurant should regulate the proper queueing system to avoid inconvenience to the customers. No body show up at the reception for help. A guy with white chef wear finally showed up, but he just ignore us. A moment later, he still ignore us and serve the customers came after us which is not fair. We finally be seated at 8:30, it’s meaningless to have booking at all. The service at reception totally ruined our experience of the dinner.

The beef tongue here is stunning. However, the wagyu is below our expectations. My recommendation is the beef tongue set.

I hope the management level can notify the problem and improve it. Probably the restaurant should cancel the booking system and just let the customer line up. Most importantly, the arrogant guy at reception should improve his...