Toridokoro Raku (according to their website “toridokoro” means “chicken bar” in Japanese) is a yakitori / all things chicken focused restaurant and the newest member of the Raku group of restaurants, which includes the original Raku in Chinatown and dessert-y Sweets Raku. I’m a big fan of Raku and was in Vegas for the weekend so made a late reservation at 11pm on a Friday.
They have an omakase dinner available for $75 but I wasn’t super hungry so I just ordered a la carte. Some of the things I wanted to try were out that night - including the chicken oyster (sold out) and the mochi chicken ball w/gravy (some supplier issue if I heard correctly). The chicken lung and kidney skewers were also sold out.
Dinner starts with an interesting free appetizer.
I should have asked some questions about what this was exactly, but according to some reviews on Yelp this is apparently seaweed jelly. One squeezes it through a box that has a square grate on the bottom to create rectangular noodle like things. These fall into a sweet, sour (vinegary) and I think chicken-y cold sauce. A nice cool appetizer. The noodles tasted a bit like mung bean jelly noodles and had a similar texture.
I ordered mostly skewers:
Chicken Wing (Teba) ($4.5)
A grilled chicken wing, partially deboned for ease of eating. Very good. The skin was nice and crisp. As with all of the skewers I tried this had a nice light clean charcoal flavor from the binchotan charcoal they use on the grill.
Chicken Cartilage (Yagen Nankotsu) ($4)
This is the cartilage between the two breasts of the chicken, with also some of the breast meat attached. Very good as well, I don’t think I’ve tried this before. The cartilage is a little crunchy but not tough, and the breast meat around it was tender.
Chicken Liver ($4)
Some perfectly cooked liver with a somewhat creamy interior, with a light coating of sweet and salty tare sauce.
Tsukune (Ground Chicken) ($4.5)
Ground chicken meatball on a stick. Nicely cooked -juicy inside and with a slightly caramelized exterior, with a light coating of tare. I also added a poached egg (+$2) to dip my chicken lollipop in.
Zucchini ($3.5)
Need to get some vegetables. Nicely cooked zucchini with some shaved bonito flakes.
Chicken Tail (Bonjiri) ($5)
Delicious! Along with the oysters one of my favorite parts of the chicken. Chicken butts from a number of chickens. Fatty and juicy and flavorful.
I also was provided as a condiment a jar of “chicken miso” which tasted like a mix of finely ground chicken and red miso to give an extra umami punch.
Aside from skewers I also had a small cup of the
Paitan Soup ($3.5)
Paitan means creamy soup and this is like the chicken equivalent of a tonkotsu broth - long simmered, rich and creamy and packed with stick to your lips collagen. A really nice bowl of soup. They also offer a ramen with this broth and also have a clear broth as well.
And as a finisher I had the
Soboro Don ($8.5)
Which was also delicious. A bowl of rice topped with a seasoned ground chicken topping, some pickled greens (mustard greens?) that provided a nice sour-ish herbal contrast to the sweet and salty chicken bits, and a quail egg yolk on top to add some eggy richness. A really nice donburi.
For dessert I had
Mango Pudding ($5)
Which came with a cup of tea. A date tea if I remember correctly. Nice little bowl of pudding. There were three layers - a creamy bottom layer, some whipped cream I think, and then a mango glaze/jelly layer with a little piece of mango. Light and refreshing with a lot of mango flavor.
I also had a couple glasses of sake from their sake list which is much smaller than Raku’s (which is about the size of a small novel).
A delicious meal, will definitely return to try some more things and maybe even the omakase.
Did you ever make it to Raku in L.A.? Raku closing was another tragedy of 2020. 
may be the case that my eyes were bigger than my stomach, but this was just about the right amount of food. Looking at Yelp reviews it seems that the omakase has some appetizers, the house made tofu, etc.
