Skip to main content6 pm-midnight Monday-Saturday. $-$$ Inexpensive-moderate.
[JAPANESE] The neighborhood is not promising. Getting to Yuzu requires getting off Highway 217 at a nondescript suburban strip mall and finding a glazed-windowed storefront marked only with small letters on the door (it's between Country Korean and the anime video-rental shop/travel agency) and, if you were so foolish as to come without calling ahead, waiting over an hour for a table. Believe me, though, when I say that there is no restaurant in the city that better merits the trouble. Yuzu, but for the lack of an impenetrable fog of smoke from an evening's worth of Mild Sevens, is an absolutely authentic izakaya. Unlike many local restaurants that claim the designation, Yuzu actually serves nothing but Japanese drinking food—grilled things, fried things, deep-fried things and ramen. You are expected to drink; your options are beer, wine, sake and shochu (a weak spirit distilled from barley). In our experience, there is not a single item on the menu that is less than very good. Among our favorites are a spring roll shell filled with kimchi, a whole grilled squid, perfect pot stickers and, best of all, grilled shishito peppers adorned only with a sprinkling of sea salt. The mild spice of the chiles, the char from the grill and the salt make for a perfect beer-drinker's snack. Most surprising was a pot of stewed pork belly; it didn't taste like much at first, but as I chewed it filled my mouth with essential, platonic porky flavor. BEN WATERHOUSE.
Ideal meal: Just read this list: Sapporo, shishito, kimchi harumaki, gyoza, jidori shio yaki.
Best deal: All of it.
WWeek 2015