“People who want to eat bear meat should either go deep into the mountains, or come to this restaurant, Tadenoha,” says chef Kiyofumi Koduru. Tadenoha is a restaurant in Tokyo that serves wild game, such as boar, bear, wild duck, and river fish personally caught by the chef’s father and served omakase style.
The main method of cooking at Tadenoha is robatayaki, a Japanese grilling tradition using skewered meat around an open charcoal fire pit. At his restaurant, chef Koduru prepares Asian black bear for shabu-shabu, sliced thin and dipped in broth. He skewers wild duck with the skin on, and sticks the skewers in a sand pit close to the coals to roast them and make them crispy. For his wild pintail boar coarse, he begins in a similar manner, but eventually takes the skewer and holds it directly over the coals the char the meat. And lastly, the small ayu fish from the Kawabe river get skewered whole, coated in roasted salt, and cooked near the coals at an 80 degree angle.
“I would like to continue running my restaurant, Tadenoha, for as long as I can,” says chef Koduru. “There is one thing I’ve been keeping inside my heart: never give up.”