A Yakitori Stand in the Driveway, 120 Kilos of Offal a Day: Two Japanese Mothers Who Run Their Own Kitchens

In a residential street in Okegawa, Saitama, north of Tokyo, a woman sells grilled pork skewers out of a white tent pitched in her own driveway. The shop is called Kurenai no Buta. The selling area is roughly two tsubo — about 70 square feet. Masako Tarumi is 34, has two sons aged 7 and 3, and had never worked in a restaurant before she opened it.

In Aikawa, Kanagawa, on the far side of Tokyo, a queue starts forming on the pavement more than an hour before opening. Motsuno sells one thing: pork offal stewed three ways. On the day filmed, 120 kilos of offal were delivered. The owner drops her 20-month-old at her parents house at dawn and is in the shop by 6:51 a.m.

Different food, different prefectures. What the two have in common is this: both women are raising small children while running the place almost entirely on their own, and neither had any restaurant experience when they started.

Fun Eats spent a day at each. What follows is the reporting from their 65-minute film.

A note on what these places sell

Yakitori (焼き鳥) is meat grilled on bamboo skewers over charcoal — usually chicken, but the name is used loosely and plenty of shops, including this one, mostly sell pork. It is bar food and takeaway food, not restaurant food. Kurenai no Buta charges a flat 180 yen (about $1.20) for every skewer on the board.

Motsu-nikomi (もつ煮込み) is pork or beef offal simmered for hours with root vegetables until it collapses. It is cheap, filling, working-lunch food, usually served as a set with rice, miso soup and pickles. Motsuno makes three versions — soy, miso, and curry.

A tsubo is the standard Japanese unit for floor area: about 3.3 square metres, or 35 square feet. Two tsubo is roughly the footprint of a garden shed.

Watch the video

Okegawa: the yakitori stand in the driveway

Masako Tarumi is 34. She lives with her husband and their two sons, seven and three. The shop stands in front of the house — and the house itself was built by her husband, who runs a home-renovation business, together with friends of his.

From ad sales to charcoal

Her previous job was in sales at an advertising agency. She quit when she married and became a full-time housewife. She had never worked in food service. What she had was a hobby qualification for teaching cooking classes, and a certificate as a yakitori adviser.

I was in ad sales before this. I started the shop on pure momentum.

She met her husband on a sales call. She went to sell him recruitment advertising and came away, as she puts it, sold to.

I went in to pitch him, and somehow he ended up pitching me. And now here I am.

The housewife phase did not last.

When I got married and stayed home, I just went blank. I'd been out on the road selling for years, and suddenly it was only the house. I was terrible at it.

The shop is about six years old. It opened as a weekends-only operation. It now trades six days a week, closed only on Wednesdays.

Up at 4:30, and that counts as a lie-in

On the day filmed she got up at 4:30 a.m. She describes this as slightly late.

I got up at half four today. That was late for me.

The early shift is livers, chicken, and getting the offal into its marinade. Then she stops, deals with the house, and gets the children out of the door. The second prep session starts at nine and has no fixed end.

From nine until it's done. Except it's never done. So at some point I give up. If I didn't give up I'd never finish, and then we couldn't open.

Pork from Gunma, 50 kilos of leeks

The main cuts are pig temple and cheek — 15 kilos on this day, in three five-kilo batches. A machine punches the meat with fine holes to tenderise it, then it is cut to bite size and the fat is separated off.

That was the temple, this is the cheek. It's the pig's face. This bit is the nose.

They drive to Gunma prefecture to collect the pork themselves. The leeks are Fukaya negi, a regional branded variety grown nearby. She uses about 20 kilos a day and buys in 50-kilo runs.

There is a reason every skewer costs the same.

They're all 180. Otherwise I lose track of the maths.

"Honestly, it is a hobby"

The skewers are large. That is deliberate — she wants one skewer to feel like something — but it pushes the food cost up.

Our pieces are big, so there isn't much profit in it.

She used to sell chicken neck. She stopped after doing the sums.

I worked out the cost and thought, there's no profit here, this is a loss. Honestly, it's a hobby.

Her forearms are covered in burn scars.

Yes, those are all burns. The oil pops off the skewers and comes at you.

The seven-year-old on skewer duty

At 3:40 p.m. her elder son gets home from school. He puts his bag down, pulls on rubber gloves and starts skewering. He knows what he is doing.

Asked his favourite skewer, he says bonjiri — chicken tail. Asked what he likes about his mother, he answers without pausing.

She grills yakitori for me.

Both boys do karate. Some mornings they are practising at home from 6:30 a.m.

My kid's dream is the Olympics. So I make sure I don't lose to him.

We're competing over which of us gets famous first. That's why I keep starting earlier and earlier.

Four in the afternoon, and the phone will not stop

Prep winds down at 3:10 p.m. and the outside setup begins: wiping down, laying out trays, lighting the charcoal, hanging the red lantern. Her husband joins in. At four, they open.

Advance orders come in by phone all through prep. At one point she is skewering with the handset wedged against her shoulder.

I can't even answer the phone any more. If people call before we open I can pick up.

Customers are not only local. One that day had driven from Ageo; another had come from Shonan, on the coast. Fifty-skewer orders are normal.

The mum here is seriously powerful. You can see how hard she's working, and it makes you want to back her. The meat is good, but it's the miso I love.

The offal is her husband’s department. He starts the marinade at 5 a.m. and weighs every portion on scales, which is the opposite of how she works. He is happy to point this out.

Asked where she wants the shop to go, she keeps it modest.

We get such good customers. I just want to keep talking to the regulars and keep doing this for a long time.

Aikawa: 120 kilos of offal, and a queue before opening

Motsuno opens at 11 a.m. and closes when the pot is empty, usually between 1:30 and 2 p.m. The queue starts more than an hour before the door opens.

Out of the house at 5:30, child dropped off first

Her day starts at 4:30 a.m. She leaves home at 5:30 and drives to her parents to drop off her daughter, because the nursery is closed at weekends. She reaches the shop at 6:51. She had five and a half hours sleep.

Up at half four, out of the house at half five, dropped the child at my parents, and came straight here.

The child is twenty months old. Until two weeks before the birth, she was running the shop alone.

I was doing it all single-handed. I was lifting heavy things thinking, this baby is going to arrive right here.

Soy, curry, miso

There are three stews. Soy sauce, curry, and miso. First-timers usually order miso.

Some people try the soy and then only ever order soy. I'm glad I made three.

The thing that ties them together is chopped garlic.

It gives it a punch — it puts edges on the flavour. I want you to take a bite, eat some rice, and immediately want another bite.

Her benchmark when tasting is instinctive but oddly precise.

I taste it constantly, so I'm checking whether anything sticks out of the usual hexagon, or whether anything's caved in.

"At the start I cried every day"

Asked whether going out on her own had made her tougher, she does not dress it up.

When the shop first opened I cried every day. Nobody came, the prep took forever, and I'd started from knowing absolutely nothing about running a restaurant.

The problems have not stopped. What she has done is fix where she points them.

You solve one worry and another one turns up. In the end it's all me. Nothing changes unless I change.

You can't blame people or blame circumstances. Once you stop doing that, nothing knocks you down.

Eleven a.m., and the rice comes cartoon-sized

You buy a meal ticket from the machine, put it on a wooden tray and wait. She asks which stew you want. Water is self-service. Pickles are free, one plate per person — lightly salted cabbage, daikon in vinegar, daikon in soy.

Rice comes in sizes. The large is heavy enough that customers struggle to lift the tray one-handed.

On the day filmed, customers had come from Machida, Fujisawa and Yokohama. One group of three had taken a day off and driven up from Hyogo, Okayama and Hiroshima.

It's the kind of taste that makes you want to come back. I'd never eaten it before.

Why she cuts at eight to nine centimetres

When the stew runs out and the shop closes, the day’s 120-kilo delivery gets prepped. At 50 to 60 kilos a day, that is two to two and a half days of stock.

Suppliers will pre-cut it. One offers three-centimetre pieces; a newer company goes up to six.

For us it needs to be about this — eight, nine centimetres. That is what gives you something to chew.

Think of a single sheet of shabu-shabu beef going into your mouth. I want people to eat the offal and have their mouth be happy.

She sorts as she goes, pulling out fatty connective tissue by hand. Anything missed gets caught later — after the first blanching, while it simmers, while she stirs, right up to plating.

The day’s time was 12 bags in 79 minutes 23 seconds, about six and a half minutes a bag. Classical music was playing while she worked.

If you play the offal classical music it goes soft. Put some Mozart on and it comes out light and fluffy.

After the offal comes tomorrow’s leeks, which are always cut the day before and left overnight so the sharpness settles. Then the rice is weighed. She finishes at 4:40 p.m. It was raining. The drive to collect her daughter takes over an hour.

I want to build somewhere fun and happy. Without ever changing what we are.

The two shops, side by side

If you are going

Kurenai no Buta, Okegawa branch

Motsuno, Aikawa

Hours, closing days and prices are as filmed. Both shops close when they sell out, and Motsuno often does so before early afternoon. Worth confirming before you go.

A note on etiquette at Motsuno: there are two parking spaces and one person cooking. Buy your ticket, eat, and leave the seat.

The part text cannot carry

Two things do not survive the transcription.

The first is the smoke at Kurenai no Buta — a tent, no seats, one grill, and orders going out faster than seems possible. The second is the speed of the knife at Motsuno. Twelve bags in 79 minutes only means something once you have watched it.

The seven-year-old on skewer duty starts at 18:40. The offal prep runs from 57:58.