Like many, I used to stumble into Tajima for late night Ramen and good eats. While I still love Tajima for many of their dishes (Geso Karaage, Tuna Tataki, sizzling steak), my latest place I'm obsessed with for Japanese noms is Yakiyudori.

It's a small less than 10 tables type restaurant where you smell the food right when you walk in and chances are you'll smell like it when you leave. They offer ramen all day but yakitori is only offered at dinner. I can confidently say that this place had some of the best ramen in San Diego.

This time we decided to sit front and center of the yakitori grill, to watch the chef work his magic. Occasionally we would zone out on the graceful way he would skewer, season, rotate and inspect each Yakitori.

What we ordered: shoyu ramen, seasoned wings (quite incredible and the skin texturally unique), shitake mushroom, chicken liver (good but not my favorite), octopus (so tender, smoky and flavorful) and bacon wrapped asparagus yakitori.

Their food and drink prices are also quite reasonable.

I'm sad that they were sold out of the sea snails, soft shell crab and the baby mackerel, but they'll definitely be on the list to order next time.

Happy nomming
<3
Chow