Nijumaru Izakaya

When I googled Izakaya restaurant in Singapore, this was the one that came up on top of the search.

For the uninitiated, izakayas are the Japanese equivalent of the beer pubs that serve food. In Japan, I always make it a point to go to 1 or 2 of them cos I really enjoy the intimate atmosphere but truth be told, I'm a sucker for "drinks" food - snacks or food that go well with alcohol - ikan bilis, mini pizzas....

I made a reservation for Friday evening even though there were several reviews on hungrygowhere about the bad service. Our table was ready when we arrived & the Chinese ladies there were friendly & we had no complaints with the service.

What's an izakaya without skewers. We ordered the usual yakitori, bacon (picture above) & of course chicken gizzards. Sadly they didn't have chicken skin or beef tongue.

X ordered a portion of soba. It must be good cos I didn't even get a chance to try it out - he had finished the whole thing in the blink of an eye.

I order this everytime I see it on the menu - chazuke. A simple dish of green tea poured over rice & topped with seaweed & in this case, mentaiko. They added a little too much spring onions as you can tell in the picture. But this dish always brings back memories of our late night drinking sessions in New York.

The menu is in Japanese (with English translation of the words) so unless you are familiar with the name of the dishes, it might be a little tricky. Just have to ask. So this dish was one of those I randomly selected from the specials of the day - a sort of egg soup with spring onions (no idea what it was called in Japanese).

This was the Nijumaru special bento with sashimi, tempura, grilled fish & braised pork with mustard (top left) which was very good.

What's Japanese food without some sake

Our all time favorite - grilled eggplant with miso paste
The eggplant melts in your mouth

Nijumaru Izakaya
#02-10 Cuppage Plaza
6235 6693