At Yakiniku Hitori, two's a crowd.

That's because the Korean-style barbecue restaurant, tucked in Tokyo's Ueno neighborhood, is carved into booths for one, for those who want to eat alone. That may seem like poison to those who love the tradition of the culinary genre, where the grill at the center of the table invites hearty company and ever-louder merrymaking.

Instead, the signature sound at Yakiniku Hitori, meaning grilled meat "for one" or "single," is the sizzle of a cut getting a good searing.

The atmosphere at the restaurant, which opened in May, is austere and the service simple. Rows of wooden cubbies, reminiscent of library cubicles, line the walls of the 25-seat restaurant. But in the place of a student bent over a pile of textbooks sits a desk with a single small grill and call button. The narrow semi-enclosed space is a challenge for waiters. Customers usually have to offer assistance, or else risk getting an elbow in the face, or a beer in the lap.

Gusts of hot air being sucked away from the lone grill, already turned on, greet patrons upon being seated. Later as the grilling gets under way the unrelenting breeze hits customers like a yakiniku-flavored desert gale, at once a smoky hot disturbance and savory reminder of the dining task at hand. The patron's view is of a wall stuck with a laminated sheet describing the restaurant's concept and instructions on how to order.

"The store's concept is that guests can carefully and slowly enjoy their desired amount of meat to satisfaction within their own private space," says the restaurant concept sheet.

It may be at a tangent to traditional Korean barbecue dining, but the concept of social activities reserved for people on their own in confined spaces is well mapped in Japan, from capsule hotels to all-night manga cafes with individual booths.

Hanging on the right hand wall of each cubicle is a menu with pictures depicting each of the eight meat dishes. There are no special cuts or courses available. The meat selection is a basic variety sold for the most part in single slice portions: ¥250 for salted tongue, ¥190 for skirt steak, ¥150 for pork belly. More adventurous offerings like intestines are sold in 50 gram portions. The only vegetables available are plates of kimchi or lettuce leaves used to wrap the meat, though the manager said the restaurant may add vegetable platters to the menu to accommodate the growing number of female customers. Guests are required to pencil in their order on a long form, ring the bell and hand the sheet to the server, a process where speaking is optional.

The dishes are brought out promptly. Small red slices rest on small round plates and come with a pair of baby tongs.

The quality of the meat is fine. It has neither the quality of a fatty slab that melts tenderly in the mouth like high quality beef, nor the stale toughness of meat served at casual chain outlets.

On a recent week night at around 8 p.m. the quartet of waiters outnumbered the two customers, whose backsides – all that was visible from the center of the space -- had the appearance of an middle-aged salary man and a male college student. The air was already thick with smoke. The store manager said the cubicle design made it difficult to hang vents over each stall to suck up the fog.

An hour later, the restaurant filled up to about a quarter capacity. In the absence of the din of dining chatter, each order confirmation read aloud by the servers was available for all to hear. A young woman in a flower dress and straw hat ordered beef ribs, known as galbi, pork belly, an assortment of kimchi and an iced tea. Another salaryman gulped down mugs of beer and got extra orders of tongue.

In a concession to those who simply refuse to dine alone, the restaurant has amended its "one person" policy slightly: It has knocked down dividers to create couples cubbies. But there are currently only two two-seaters, with no plans to add more.

And for those too weighed down to make it home, rest comes easy. They can sleep off any food coma at the capsule hotel located about 20 paces away.

View the slideshow here

Read this post in Japanese/日本語訳はこちら≫