Yakitori BIRD LAND Ginza — Restaurant in Tokyo

It’s hard for me to review this place, but I keep coming back to this: I did not enjoy the food. It was not objectively bad, plenty of people enjoy it, it’s just that… I didn’t?

The meat itself was very interesting, definitely different than any chicken I’ve ever had. The cook on all the chicken was very precise, I definitely would not be able to hit those temps.

But, it just lacked flavor? I can guess the idea is you want the flavor of the chicken to come through, but it just… I’ve had more “chicken” flavor from chicken thighs grilled on the side of the street in the third world. Like, you’d expect to have moments in a meal like this where you say “wow, that tastes good!”. That didn’t happen.

If you are going to go through all of the trouble of sourcing those ingredients, developing the recipes, building the team to hit such tight tolerances on the food so consistently… I mean you’d expect the food to taste good?

The most delicious items of the meal were the grilled cheese and the tomato on my salad… The oyakodon was bland and they used unseasoned chicken breast in it, the soup that came with it tasted like salt water, the most interesting part of the tofu course was the olive oil, and just lots and lots of unseasoned chicken breast. They even managed to remove all of the flavor from the chicken tail and teriyaki thigh.

In fact, the teriyaki thigh was the most confusing. No hint of sweetness or salt. Even the skin was flavorless, no texture or fat or anything to latch on to. The only flavor there was this astringent burnt flavor that lingered for a bit, probably the result of trying to render all of the flavor out of the skin and burning the sauce.

I don’t want to be too hard, but… I don’t know it just tasted like food made in a kitchen where they ran out salt and went out of their way to not lean into the parts of chicken that are delicious. Unseasoned chicken breast, I had a lot of that.

At the end of the day, it’s not even about value for money. I think you could probably find tastier yakitori and maybe any...

The quality of food was terrible and service was severely under par. I've been to many michelin star restaurants and I do not think this place deserves a star. I am 100% on board for sparse seasoning to let the beautiful ingredients shine. However the chicken they used here - the sparse seasoning actually accented how unfortunate this chicken really was. The chicken was chewy and full of cartilage. Some skewers had parts that tasted raw. The salt accentuated the putrid smell of the chicken. The basil spread chicken thighs made the smell even worst.

The only OK skewer was the melted cheese because it wasn't chicken and in comparison to everything else on the menu it was just marginally better as my standards for melted cheese are pretty low.

My husband and I do business in Tokyo so we are knowledgeable with the local cuisine - this place ranks in one of the worst meals we have ever had in Tokyo.

Also didn't help that the moment we held up our last skewer (not even bit into it) they came over and asked us if we wanted to order more or if we were done so that we can leave. Funny because there wasn't anyone else waiting and there were empty seats.

This is the most disappointing michelin star meal I have ever had in my life (I...

Look for the suit place when outdoors then take the subway stairs down. Through the glass doors on your left and you should see a sign in English. Place is a pain in the ass to find without that knowledge beforehand.

Really good food here, a little pricey I think but the quality of the meat and seasoning of it is hard to beat for this kind of dining. There is a reason it has one Michelin star. We were there at 7.30 with reservations and it was pretty much full, though I didn't notice anyone waiting outside. Staff seems to speak fairly good English and were helpful in picking things out -- but they have an English menus too. Was around 130$ US for the two of us including quite a few drinks and 3 rounds of 3-4 plates each order -- which is arguably higher for yakatori. Don't miss the fried cheese, it was really tasty. Towards the end our Japanese speaking regular told us to try the chiy and rice, but alas we were full by then. They did run out of at least 2 things we tried to order so you may want to come earlier than 7.30. Most of the seats are around the grill but they do have 2 largish tables towards the back. Note that it gets extremely hot in there due to the proximity of the grills, so dress...