Kevin Marple

Think of an izakaya as a pub, a cozy yet boisterous place for small bites to accompany drinks. You can throw back a few rings of grilled squid or nibble on a chicken-heart skewer and then wash it down with a frosty Asahi Super Dry or a light and fruity chūhai (a shōchū highball). It’s all about communal comfort food, set out on little plates to encourage snacking. You’ll find belly-filling dishes, such as bowls of lip-smacking ramen with thick slicks of black garlic oil on the surface, or humble student fare like omurice (a Western-style omelet filled with fried rice) and wafu pasta (spaghetti reddened with ketchup and tossed with ham).

So enter. Check the board for handwritten specials. Find a table with your friends. And then settle in for a lively night organized around shared adventures.

The door cheerfully jingles open at this funky joint at the end of a strip mall, which stays open till 2 am most nights. Come with a crowd for grilled squid or the kitchen’s excellent version of the thick, savory pancake called okonomiyaki, fluttering with bonito flakes. Under neon signs advertising highballs made with barley or sweet potato shōchū, patrons quaff pitchers of Asahi.

Slip off your shoes, sit cross-legged at a low table, and choose your sake cup from the basket proffered. Mr. Max is about full immersion. Hand-lettered signs may help steer you toward oden (fishcakes in dashi broth), grilled fish collars, miso-braised eggplant, or beads of raw octopus riled with wasabi. Here you’ll find some of the best takoyaki (fried balls made of octopus) in town.

There’s no particular charm to make you want to linger, but don’t underestimate this three-decades-old spot. The most intriguing items are in an old-school vein: chawanmushi, a savory egg custard filled with tender chicken and tiny shrimp; grated Japanese yam, faintly sweet and starchy, mixed with raw tuna and nori strips; and green tea noodles.

This isn’t technically an izakaya, but it’s a homey spot imbued with the presence of its owners. Lunch starts with lightly pickled napa cabbage and a miso-dressed salad, and might lead to one of their elegant bento boxes ($28 at lunch; $40 at dinner). The tonkatsu curry is a perfectly breaded and fried cutlet under a tawny-colored curry, full of root vegetables.

Grill Masters

The tradition of Japanese-style grilling is centuries old, dating back to northern fishermen in Hokkaido who carried wooden boxes of red-hot charcoal on their boats so they could cook their catch when they landed on the beach at the end of the day. The grilling method is called robatayaki (robata for short), meaning “around the fireplace.” Food is cooked over a hibachi using binchōtan, a special kind of charcoal made from white oak, which burns white-hot with little or no smoke or flames.

Teppo best embodies the tradition of yakitori, the expert grilling of all parts of the chicken, including the heart, gizzard, and skin. Skewers of chicken thigh, perfect with the bright pungent touch of Tokyo negi (green onion), lie side by side with shiitake mushroom caps, beef heart marinated in miso and seared to caramelization, and juicy chicken meatballs that you dredge through a quail egg wash for extra luxury.

At this chic modern restaurant, there are artichokes with wasabi aioli and palm-long smelt, tender bellied but crispy on the outside. Sea bass bundled into a foil packet on the grill releases a luxurious, intoxicating aroma from enoki mushrooms and a buttery miso sauce. In the spring, they might have tender bamboo shoots, light and vegetal in flavor, or ankimo, a monkfish liver slab with slightly wild shiso leaf.

Time stops in this humble spot, where you are on the grill’s lazy time. From the bar, you can watch the patient turning of skewers. When your juicy bits arrive, you’ll get your own charcoal grill to keep them warm. The classic chicken thigh and negi is marvelous. Beef tongue is tender umami richness; shishito peppers can be dabbed with miso or tōgarashi spice.

Sake-marinated black cod has the hallmarks of the high-heat robata: soft and tender inside, the skin crisped from the grill. Appetizers include innovations like a silky scallop custard set with gelatin in a scooped orange. And here you’ll find what is perhaps the best nabeyaki udon in town, the chubby noodles (fat and slippery, a delight to slurp) in a broth flavored with shiitakes and kombu kelp.

Japanese BBQ

Catherine Downes

Japanese barbecue, yakiniku (yaki = grill; niku = meat) refers to a tradition of grilled meats.

It’s stylistically similar to Korean barbecue, but has become its own domain of expertise, exercised over the telltale hot grill set into the table, highlighting simple cuts of high quality beef rather than pork.

This is where you do a deep dive into Japanese Wagyu, beef known for its lustrous marbling, its pinnacle the A5 designation and its golden chalice the beef from Kobe. Where Korean barbecue includes swaths of pork, in Japanese barbecue, the focus is on beef: the precision of the cuts, the quality of the meat. Shishitos or other vegetables get snuggled alongside meats on the grill (rather than coming in Korean barbecue’s parade of saucers of banchan: pickled daikon, kimchi, and other gojuchang-laced treats). And this is not about galbi, which are cuts mopped in saucy marinades that bring garlic and soy and the sweetness of apples or pears into savory play.

In Japanese barbecue, meats are generally not marinated, but have a tare: a seasoning for accenting the cuts after grilling—most often the common soy, sake, mirin sugar, garlic, sesame mix, but also garlic-shallot or miso-based. The cuts themselves might be beef belly, rib eye, New York steak, sirloin flap. They might include offal—tongue with salt and lemon juice is delicious—chicken breast and thigh, or seafood. Look for off-menu Wagyu cuts. Gather your courage. Take to the embers. It’s all in your hands. Pray you don’t desecrate the Wagyu, that sine qua none of premium beef.

Eat it at Niwa Japanese Barbecue in Deep Ellum.