夜焼き

Notes

July was a busy month for us personally and so we wern't planning to do any events, however we saw that Sunflower Sake was going to be hosting a live watch party for the final day of the Nagoya Grand Sumo tournament. The stream would start at 11:30pm which sounded like just the right time for some yakitori so I reached out to Nina & Molly to see if they'd be OK with me setting up the konro and grilling up skewers. Fortunately they were thinking the same thing!

I didn't want to prep full chickens as I wasn't sure how many people would show up and I wouldn't have the space for the variety of skewers. I decided to do a smaller menu of just eight skewers without any sides to keep things simple. I picked up 20 thighs, 6 breast, two packs of heart, two packs of gizzard, two pounds of cartilage, six king oyster mushrooms, and 45 shishto peppers. I didn't use all the thigh, I kept some back to make karage at home the next day. I also didn't use the complete breast, just the top halves. I diced up the bottom half to use at home for dinner a couple days later. All in all I made 186 skewers. The first skewers came off at 11:30pm and the last came off around 1:30am, a few minutes later the tournament wrapped up. We didn't get a full count of everyone that came, but it was probably over 50 people, but not everyone had skewers. I only collected tips with no suggest amount and ended up getting around $2.50 per skewer.

I ended up grilling 2-4 of the same types of skewer at a time and doing 2-3 types and then just putting them on plates in pairs for people to grab. I knew that if I took orders I wouldn't be able to keep track. I think it worked out OK, but if I do something like this again I'll probably change it. I think trying to fill the grill with 1-2 types at a time and then just placing them on a tray for people to take as they come off would work better. I was hoping to get thru the skewers quicker and trying to mix in too much variety slowed me down. I also lost 3-4 negima skewers as flare ups cause the skewers to burn.

Overall it was a great time and really fit in with my image of how I want to serve skewers. Night time in an industrial area with some sake and other Japanese culture surrounding us and a good mix of Japanese and non-Japanese people. I was chatting after the event and said mentioned how I have no desire to serve skewers during the daytime under some pop up tent at whatever event. It's got to fit the feeling in my mind and heart.