You can read my column on Kamo-shabu Chikutei at the Japan Times Online. Now here's the illustrated version...
The look is contemporary: backlit glass alcoves, a long glass counter, and a few tables at the back.
Just about everything on the food menu involves duck in one form or another, apart from the morokyu cucumbers (and boiled peanuts).
It's a drinking and dallying kind of place, and there are plenty of side dishes to go with the alcohol. One of my favourites is the duck tsukudani, made with tamari (the dark savoury soy sauce favoured in Nagoya and the surrounding region) and plenty of sansho peppercorns.
Those are shochu bottles decorating the alcoves facing the counter. Chikutei also stocks half a dozen types of sake too, all from Aichi, including the tasty Handago, a junmai ginjo produced by Kunizakari.
That went well with the tobanyaki: duck and vegetables cooked in front of us on a handsome burner.
It's simply seasoned with miso, but to provide that extra tongue-numbing kick there's a whole cruet of sasho seeds.
To lighten things up, some salad — with slices of lightly smoked duck gizzard. It's surprisingly good.
Time for the centerpiece: the duck shabu-shabu...
The noodles that go in the pot at the end are light and delicate. They're the same as used in the eponymous ramen...
A quick word about the boss, Tokuzou Niimi. He came up with the concept of duck shabu-shabu (and duck ramen) back in 1981 and managed to register the ideas. He was running his restaurant in his home town, Handa (southeast of Nagoya), for over a decade before opening in Akasaka. Hardly a conventional restaurateur, it is his character and presence (even when he's not there) that give Chikutei its refreshingly approachable character.
Just one final image: the one part of the duck you can't eat... the bill*.
*About the final cost: our mistake was to order a double serving of the duck shabu-shabu. At¥6,000 a head (now increased to ¥6,800) that bumped up our bill considerably. Good as it was, one portion between two would have been plenty good enough for us.
Here is a link to Chikutei's web site...
And here's a map link...
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