The Beatles Bar is Kota's Kitchen. The music is mostly Beatles, and so is the decor. It's where men go to get drunk and nostalgic and snack on delicious Japanese bar food that is bad for you. I've been trying to eat my way through Kota's extensive menu, but have hit a few health concerns. The other night, after fifteen dishes, I watched in horror as a friend topped a piece of deep-fried Camembert with deep-fried chicken skin and moved towards the mayonnaise. I felt bad for putting him in a situation where such things can even be contemplated. (I ate my deep-fried cheese and my deep-fried chicken separately, thank you very much).

So, I've moderated my ambitions. I'll work my way back towards the "healthier" end of Kota's menu, the one that includes fresh carrots, cucumbers, daikon, and cabbage (to dip into Japanese mayo), grilled avocados, and "pork toro".

I'm afraid of what comes after deep-fried chicken skin. But maybe you want to continue where I've left off. I'll get you started with a few suggestions. Good luck finishing.

First, it should be said that Kota's is not for purists in any form. Kota is this guy:



He spent a few years in an Italian joint in Tokyo, and a while longer in a robatayaki, before escaping Japan for something less rigid. He doesn't want to be in Gubei among the salarymen, so he set up just off the stadium in Xujiahui. He serves things like this new addition to the menu, a pretty decent chicken liver pate, with garlic bread. And coffee creamer. I'm not sure what the coffee creamer is supposed to add. I asked. He smiled. Hey, creativity.



He grills avocados and Camembert cheese and does at least three other ridiculous things. He has a "chicken wing dumpling" -- a pork filling stuffed into the center of chicken wing and grilled.He stuffs a fist-sized potato croquette with a soft-boiled egg and fries the whole thing. When you break the potato crust, the egg oozes out. It seems modeled on a Scotch egg, except it's better. He makes blue cheese "pizza", which has a corn chip base, a bit of salsa, and melted blue cheese. It's more nacho than pizza and maybe shouldn't be your first order. Its success is inversely proportional to the level of your sobriety. He serves snappy pork sausages "on the bone." You figure that one out. (I know he's not the first to do it, but it makes me smile every time.)

Clearly, the guy is not hidebound by tradition, but he does take from it well. He makes his own fruit-flavored shochu with whatever is in season. Last week, he had plum. This week, the apple and peach shochu he's making will be ready. It takes two weeks. If you time it right, he might even have the garlic one.



His place is subtitled Beatles Bar, Yakitori, Shochu, and his yakitori can be among the best in the city. Here's his pork belly, cut thick, pre-grill (beef tongue, tomatoes wrapped in bacon, and the avocado are lined up behind).



He serves the smoky, salty belly with a dollop of dull green yuzukosho. It's great. There's another cut called "pork toro" on the menu. Like toro, it's rich and deeply marbled. Unlike toro, it has a bit of bite and comes grilled. It's pork neck.

What else? It's hard to dislike deep-fried cheese or deep-fried chicken skin. The first comes with fruit jam, the second with fine shreds of nori and a liberal dusting of seven-spice chili powder.



His braised oxtail dish is excellent. It's tender and fatty and has the twang of corned beef. It's flavored with soy and black pepper. His baked potato is inlaid with bacon before being wrapped and foil and grilled. It comes to the table with a glorious slab of butter, a flavored salt, and a pure Okinawan sea salt.



There's a ton more. I like the cooked mentaiko, sliced like a sausage, and served with a packet of nori sheets to wrap it up in. Kota's shoyu ramen is good as well. But the menu is massive. The drinks list is long and fun to go through. It's easy to get sucked back into the Beatles Bar over and over and over again, especially considering that the kitchen doesn't close until 1am. For the last two months, there's been a German guy planted at the bar every single night, slugging Asahi, practicing his Mandarin on the staff, and, no doubt, causing irreparable damage to his circulatory system. (He's gone now.) I've seen a few semi-known chefs, Japanese and Western, in here regularly as well, coming for dinner and drinks after knocking off from their own places.



If there's any criticism of Kota's, besides that prolonged exposure may break your heart, it's just a flipside to its intimacy -- it can be tough to get a table at peak times. The grilled chicken breast with ume and shiso is bland and boring despite its strong toppings, and the chicken wings seem to get pulled off the grill before the skin fully cooks. After mowing down 20+ dishes in the last week, that's about all I can remember. But I'll be back again.

Kota's Kitchen, 2905 Xietu Lu, near Lingling Lu, 6481 2005. Cab drivers may tell you that the intersection doesn't exist. They are wrong. For more details, including a map, click here. Food and drinks at Kota's, about 175rmb per person. With minimal restraint, something I do not exercise, it may very well be cheaper.