Grilled ── Yakitori
Higashimatsuyama Yakitori
pork cheek skewers with spicy miso
Pork cheek grilled over charcoal and brushed with a spicy miso sauce.
- Origin: Saitama Higashimatsuyama
- About 50 km northwest of Tokyo
Lineage
What it's made of
It's called yakitori, but what's on the skewer is pork cheek — the meat around the temple and jowl. Low in fat, it delivers a firm, chewy bite with real savor. Fresh off the grill it's tender, but it stiffens fast, so eating it hot is the whole point. A miso-based sauce spiked with garlic and chili adds fragrance and heat that the meat's plainness needs.
How it's made
The cheek is grilled slowly over charcoal until excess fat renders away, then coated generously in the miso sauce right before serving. Every shop mixes its own blend, so the ratio of garlic to chili varies enough that the same dish tastes different from one counter to the next. Skewering is done in-house too, and depending on whether a cut leans toward temple or jowl, the texture shifts slightly skewer to skewer. Eating it hot, straight off the grill, is the whole point.
Why it took this shape
One account says a stallholder from the Korean peninsula first served plain white pork offal in a sweet soy sauce in the 1950s, but it was too tough to bite through cleanly, so he switched to cheek meat — a cut then mostly relegated to ham and sausage production. What made it stick was that a nearby meat-processing center could supply it cheap and fresh.
Before you go
- Otoshi and how to payAt izakaya, a small dish called otoshi often arrives without being ordered, tipping isn't customary, and how you pay depends on the shop.
- Izakaya customsFrom the small starter dish called otoshi, the classic "for now, a draft beer" first order, ordering a little at a time, choosing tare or shio for yakitori, soy sauce dishes, a closing course, and last orders and smoking rules.
- Dining with kids, a wheelchair, or big luggagePractical notes on eating out with children, getting around with a wheelchair, and what to do with a suitcase or large bags.
Dishes in the same style
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Contrast
Also from Saitama
- Sakekasu Miso RamenA winter-only ramen from Ageo City, where sake lees from a long-running local brewery are worked into a Chinese restaurant's miso broth. The lees' depth and aroma layer over the miso's savoriness, leaving a mellow finish that warms the body in the cold months.
- Dojo NiPond loach caught in the paddies of eastern Saitama, simmered sweet and savory with shaved burdock, from a land fed by the Arakawa and Tone rivers. Rich in nutrients, it was valued as a tonic and a food for pregnant women.
- Gyoda Furai"Furai" from around Gyoda, Saitama, despite its name, isn't fried — it's grilled. Chopped scallion and pork go on a wheat-flour batter cooked on a griddle, an okonomiyaki-like snack said to have caught on with the women working the town's tabi-sock factories.
- HiyajiruSesame and miso ground in a mortar, mixed with summer vegetables like cucumber and shiso, then chilled with cold water. It serves as a dipping broth for udon in noodle-loving Saitama, and Kawajima town calls it suttate.
- Iga ManjuA sweet bean bun wrapped in red rice and steamed, said to originate in Konosu. Named for its resemblance to a spiky chestnut burr, it balances a sweet-salty flavor with a chewy bite.
- IimochiLeftover rice kneaded with wheat flour, shaped and pan-grilled flat, a Saitama snack. In an era of hand-worked farming, it could be made in the morning and carried to the fields like a packed lunch. Names for it vary by area.