There is a lot of good food in Japan – essentially places that mainly locals go and Sasagin would be one such neighbourhood izakaya. Izakaya, in my mind, are like pubs or tapas bars where the focus is on the drinks and generally decent food happens to be served as an accompaniment. In Sasagin’s case, the food is also excellent while sake is the owner’s forte.

A Japanese foodie friend recommended we come to Sasagin – good food without having to pay a lot for it. While not much english is spoken, there is a drinks menu available in english – which my husband, who loves sake was happy to explore. The food is seasonal and the menu may change daily. So ordering food without a Japanese speaker could take a bit more effort although you could also just tell them to do something omakase style. However, the following is a sampling of the dishes we had last June.

We started with a sampling of starters so these were all cold dish items, from top to bottom: a very good goma (sesame) tofu with red beans, okara salad, sushi ball with plum sauce, a dumpling with spinach, and stewed melon with bonito flakes. This was a nice way to start the meal.

Next we had some sashimi – which would be what they have fresh for the day. This is not going to be as outstanding as the fish you get from the specialty sushi bars but helps to satisfy the palate. So you could opt to skip this but I think having some sashimi as the second course gives a nice intro into he cooked dishes.

We had a very good grilled fish next. This was a sayori (half-beak fish) that had been dried for one to two days before grilling.

Incidentally my husband had a sake pairing (more or less) and had a Jokigen Junmai Daiginjo from Yamagata with the sashimi and then a Kenkonichi Junmai Ginjo-genshu from Miyagi with the grilled sayori.

Our next dish was the stewed vegetables which consisted of melon, egg plant, okra and a wheat dumpling (“fu”). Incidentally glass ware was used as it was summer. The wife of Sasagin’s owner has a really nice ceramics store up the road. I bought some plates from her before dinner.

There was a very good fried red snapper (shown in the featured photo to this article), breaded with grounded rice cracker. Definitely great comfort food to accompany the drinks.  My husband had the Kirakucho Junmai Ginjo from Shiga, extra dry.  Naturally, we couldn’t turn down the braised pork belly.

Also very good was an excellent octopus salad. To me, this was one of the highlights for our meal. The sliced grilled octopus was very fresh and served with yamaimo – Japanese mountain potato.

In between there was a minced chicken meatball which I didn’t photograph. We ended the meal with one of the house specialties (don’t miss this) – rice cooked in a claypot with sakura ebi. Simply outstanding.

The last two sakes were a Ohroku unpasteurised extra dry sake and a Juyondai Junmai from Yamagata.

Sasagin is located just opposite the Yoyogi-Uehara station, which is on the Chiyoda and Odakyu lines.

Call for reservations: 03-5454-3715. There is no website.