I’m sick and tired of poseur Japanese food being marketed as the real deal in Singapore. Your brand just doesn’t look Japanese enough? Slap on a cutesy logo with Engrish slogan and Viola! You’ve got yourself a healthy following of jap-food crazed Singaporeans. Too bad not everyone is as discerning when it comes to flushing out the wannabes from the authentic.

So THANK GOD for Nanbantei. Understated shop front, next-to-zilch advertising (unless you count good’ol word-of-mouth), it recedes to 80s nostalgic incongruity in teeny-bopper Far East Plaza. If my dad hadn’t brought us there some 6 or 7 years ago, I would have walked right by and been denied some of the most authentic Japanese kushiyaki 6.5 hours away from Japan.

And to this day, Nanbantei remains on my crave list, that is, a must-go spot should a heart-stopping, mind-numbing and spasm-inducing lust for meat on sticks with a healthy sprinkle of salt besets me. And trust me, since Nanbantei, such episodes have been often. At Nanbantei, they do not dunk the prized sticks into teriyaki sauce. The offending sauce is one of the best known and ubiquitous exports from Japanese cuisine and has, unbeknownst to non-connoisseurs, invaded every dish that sounds remotely Japanese. I’m sorry but I’m not one for desert-sweet meat for my mains, thank you very much. So not only does the teriyaki sauce colonize every known Japanese dish, it has also been bastardized to a much sweeter, south-east-asian variant. So imagine my relief when Nanbantei had none of such nonsense. My stamp of approval was given on first visit.

Though commonly offered by other restaurants, you have to try Nanbantei’s version of the bacon asparagus. There tissue-thin bacon wins the day over the overly fatty and chewy offerings I’ve had elsewhere. Tebasaki (chicken wings) is also prepared the authentic way where the chef actually splits the mid-joint apart, so that as you chew through the deliciousness, the bones falls right off your stick. No fuss, no grease and god only knows why nobody else lack the sense to follow suit (except for Kazu and maybe Shin Kushiyaki). Nanbanyaki is beef grilled with a healthy dash of miso. A must-have at this joint!

Most of the menu items come in pairs and the more premium ones will be served solo. One such premium item is the Salmon wrapped with Bacon. It’s just the brilliant pairing of 2 of my favourite meat in the world, served with the bacon grilled to the right amount of crisp and the salmon never overcooked. Most items average at $5 per 2 sticks whereas the premium ones could range anywhere from $6 and up for a stick.

Kushiyaki is standard Japanese salarymen fare after a hard day’s work over copious amounts of beer. In Singapore, it tends to get overly expensive too quickly if all I had were miniscule amounts of meat on sticks. I tend to have my dinner here paired with garlic rice and a tofu claypot soup, so some semblance of a balanced meal will go easy on my stomach and my wallet. The chefs may be a largely Singaporean crew these days, but I’d wager they went through Japanese boot-camp to qualify a place behind that charcoal grill. I’d say skip the sashimi if you can help it, this is simply not the place where one should lose focus from amazing kushiyaki, so don’t let lackluster sashimi do this place any unneeded injustice.