From sashimi to skewers, the omakase menu offers you an opportunity to try different parts of the chicken, each cooked in the best way that maximizes the deep flavor. They are also served beautifully to entertain your eyes before you taste them.

The starting chicken sashimi dish looks like a French appetizer. Raw kyukyoku-dori breasts are diced into small pieces and stacked with layers of colorful summer vegetables like cucumbers and eggplants. The Yamagata dashi soup brings all the flavors together.

Kuma’s egg rice is adorable to look at. Kinkan egg yolks are decorated with seaweed cut into the shape of a bear character. The eggs sit on top of rice flavored in fat from grilled chicken. Squeeze out the creamy raw inside of the yolks onto the rice before your first spoonful.

Grilled fugumune has become the restaurant’s signature dish for the extraordinary flavor. A small layer of kyukyoku-dori breast meat is grilled with grains of salt. The yellow chives enhance the umami of the tender meat.

Sasami, chicken breast filets, is grilled and topped with wasabi. The meat is cooked rare on the inside. The chicken wings are lightly dried before grilled slowly over the charcoal grill. The crispy skin is packed with aroma and flavor.

Grilled tamahimo or chochin eggs are first dipped in a delicious homemade sauce made with chicken bones and seasonings.

INGREDIENTS
“As a members-only restaurant, I knew I had to offer something special that people can’t get elsewhere,” Kumawaki explains. “Finding the best chicken became my mission. I would visit producers across the country whenever someone told me about some delicious chicken.”

After an extensive search, Kumawaki selected two brands to serve at Kuma no Yakitori 106. Kyukyoku-dori or “ultimate chicken” is an original breed that Kumawaki raises with a farmer in Chiran, Kagoshima. Maboroshi-dori or “phantom chicken” comes from a farm in Kumamoto Prefecture.

Vegetables also play an important part, the head chef adds. “Freshness matters the most for vegetables,” he says. “If you eat corn right after it’s picked, it’s incredibly sweet. But that’s what corn should taste like.” He rents a garden plot near his house to grow his own vegetables. Every day before coming into the restaurant, he would stop by the garden to pick fresh vegetables to use in the meal.