When in Tokyo: Drop by This Small Eatery for Their Killer Chicken-Egg Bowl

(SPOT.ph) With Japanese food, you have your high-end hits but also humbler, homier fare. One dish that perfectly represents the latter? Oyakodon, the dish of chicken and egg over rice that embodies home-cooked comfort like nothing else. Most folks would likely just make and eat the dish from their own kitchens and dining tables, respectively—but one version we got to try from Tokyo eatery Hashidaya takes the dish to sultry, toe-curlingly sublime heights. It absolutely ought to be on your Tokyo eat-inerary.

Also read: The SPOT.ph Guide to Japanese Food

Visit this chicken restaurant in Shibuya, Tokyo for their killer rice bowl:

Hashidaya has a number of locations around Tokyo, its main outpost being in Shibuya—which the author spontaneously stumbled upon and dined at on a recent trip to Tokyo (on her last day with her flight back being later that day at that!). It's a short walk away from Shibuya Scramble Square but is fairly low-key, especially given the other popular dining spots along the street. Keep an eye out for the banner with its name in Japanese: は?-?"?屋.

What the restaurant lacks in frills—it's one of those small eateries with a limited number of front-counter seats and it can get pretty packed during peak hours—it more than makes up for in the food department. One glance at the menu and you'll see that chicken is the name of the game here. This isn't just any old chicken, though, but high-quality free-range birds from around Japan, cooked up in ways that highlight their natural flavor. There are a couple of items on the menu, and we cannot recommend the Oyakodon enough.

A popular donburi a.k.a. rice bowl, oyakodon (which amusingly, if not brutally, translates to parent-child rice bowl to refer to the chicken and the egg) is one of those home-cooked classics that sounds simple on paper. For the most part it's pretty much chicken, eggs, onions (in most versions—more on that later), and rice—standard stuff you'd likely make or have made for you after a tiring day at work on a random weekday. But anyone who's ever digged into a bowl would know that this is damn-good stuff that satisfies on more than just the physical level, when done right.

Hashidaya does it absolutely right and perhaps more. We got the Oyakodon set available at lunch time (in typical Japanese dining fashion, you're bound to get the best deals within this time period). For a reasonable JPY 1,000 (roughly P414.05 as of writing), you get miso soup, tsukemono  (Japanese pickles), a small vessel of hiyayakko tofu, and of course, a generous bowl of oyakodon that draws you in the moment your order's placed in front of you. From the deeply savory aroma to the sea of soft-set eggs to the golden egg yolk that glistens against the light, there's plenty to swoon over here—and at this point we're just talking presentation.

Dig into it and you're met with the real killer aspect of this dish: the taste. Where do we begin? There's the chunks of meat that actually taste rich and, well, chicken-y—you can tell they used a high-quality bird, and cooked it just enough that it's cooked but kept it plump and juicy as can be. The egg part of the equation is equally superb—think barely cooked and soft and supple on the tongue, especially when it comes to the parts hit by the lava-like yolk. The rice underneath is no mere filler of course, being warm and naturally fragrant—and perfectly absorbing the savory-sweet juices of the soy-mirin-egg-chicken mix from above. Should things get too rich, you can sprinkle over some of the sansho pepper and/or shichimi togarashi present on your table, for zesty and nutty-fiery contrast respectively.

The author's one qualm? The lack of onions in the chicken mix of this iteration, onions being a typical ingredient in most home-cooked versions that we'd usually deem a non-negotiable for the natural sweetness it gives. Still, this bowl was otherwise pretty much perfection that far outweights the sum of its parts—and looks mighty good on camera if we may add. This is plenty filling stuff, mind you. Expect to feel the post-fatty lunch fatigue come afternoon, should you decide to finish the entire bowl. But it's a worthy endeavor to do so anyway; you'll be remembering every spoonful for the years to come. We still do.

Hashidaya Shibuya is at 3-15-4 Shibuya, Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-0002, Japan.

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