Eating Scraps: Chicken at Yakitori Totto

Alex and I had dinner in Manhattan at Yakitori Totto, as recommended by Michael Ruhlman, who called its yakitori offerings the “best chicken ever.” We were able to get seats at the grill without a reservation and walked right down the special selection menu, which included heart, liver, neck, breast bone, gizzards, skin, and [pictured above] tail and knees. We talked about our meal this morning in IM.

Joel: The only painful part about that meal was paying $50 for what was, essentially, chicken scraps.
Alex yeah, but who knew that organ meats would be so tasty?
Alex Not me!
Joel: The organ meats were probably my favorites: the liver was the best I’ve ever tasted besides the deep-fried versions of my youth. And the heart!
Joel: I never would have thought that chicken heart would taste so much like pork.
Alex Yeah. I mean, the knees were interesting, and the texture was not as hard and gristle-y as I’d expected, but the heart and the gizzard definitely trumped them.

Alex what surprised me was how simply each was prepared
Joel: Well, yakitori isn’t that technical. It’s just a wood-fired grill.
Joel: Street food, traditionally.
Alex sure
Joel: So once again, we paid $50 for chicken parts from a glorified food cart.
Alex but I meant, there were no sauces or marinades to mask or drive the flavors away
Joel: I think my favorite would have to have been the neck.
Joel: Although the way it pulled apart like an old telephone cord was weird.
Alex what we got was the natural essence of chicken, and I’ve never tasted anything so extremely chickeny.
Alex EXTREME CHICKEN!
Joel: There’s something about the parts like the gizzard that did end up making it have all the greasy goodness of chicken but still with some interesting texture.
Joel: That especially surprised me with the gizzards, because when you deep fry them, they turn into little rubber bands.
Alex How did I put it last night? The gizzard was like a chicken-flavored water chestnut that kind of broke down and eventually melted down my throat.
Joel: Anything you didn’t like?
Alex no, but the more traditional bits, like the wing and the chunks of breast meat, they weren’t really all that exceptional.
Alex Oh, and the breast bone was pointless
Alex though artful
Alex I was not crazy about it’s texture – maybe it should have been cooked a bit longer
Joel: Yeah, that was the one thing that Ruhlman went off on but I wasn’t really into. The only parts that had any real flavor were the charred bits at the end.
Joel: Anyway, now that I have consumed a chicken’s heart, I will forever carry its spirit into battle.
Joel: And you can’t put a price on that.
Alex y’know
Alex one thing I’m fairly certain of, is that they almost certainly started with a fresh chicken, and by that I mean that they probably killed and prepared the chicken themselves;
Joel: Why are you certain of that?
Alex Asians rarely order chicken at restaurants because chickens that have been dead for more than a few hours before their preparation lose an awful lot of flavor.
Joel: Hrm. I don’t know how much I believe either part of that statement.
Alex I can prove it to you when we go to Grand Sichuan
Alex they put this tidbit right on the menu
Joel: There’s only one way to determine this for certain: go back to that yakitori joint and ask.