にんにくや

I have been here twice, so far. The first time I was underwhelmed by the service. My party was running late, so we phoned to let them know. It seemed like it would be okay. But when the first two of us got there five minutes late, they told us that they had given away out table. (What?) Unenthused, until a few minutes later when they called us to say something along the lines of, «JK! You’re good.» So back we went into the kingdom of garlic.
And then the food happened. And it was glorious.
Fast forward a couple years, and I’m back again with some friends. No issues with the reservation, save some miscommunications when booking for a party of seven. I don’t know how they could have misheard my friend in so many ways. But other than that, they were super accommodating and we were able to get our garlic on.
The group I was with was all recovering from a pretty heavy couple of days, so we limited ourselves to soft drinks and, oh, you know, lots of garlic. Magic. It is magic. If you don’t mind stinking of the delicious nectar of the gods for a few days, go for it, and go the whole way with the amazing selection of garlic-​laced, garlic-​centric cooking.
Definitely get the garlic toast. I mean, there’s garlic inside of it. Wrap your head around that. And if you’re feeling meat, but are worried that a steak might be kinda small, as this is Japan, and everything, well, go for the beef skirt! I recommend going with friends, ordering a ton of dishes, and just splitting everything. You will not regret it. A warning, though, their super spicy friend rice is actually pretty spicy. For once, I have been impressed with the heat at a Japanese-​run restaurant.
If you aren’t drinking, it’s surprisingly reasonably priced, too. Maybe not a «let’s go every week!» level of reasonable, unless, well, you have money for that, but it’s not undoable on an entry-​level salary, or the scraps you may be working for teaching people that there is more to the world than «this is a pen.»
Highly recommended.