Amazing grace

In yakitori restaurants almost every bit of a chicken is threaded onto wooden skewers before being marinated, grilled and basted.

Skin, cartilage, gizzard, liver, oyster, wing and thigh as well as breast fillet get their moment over the coals. At the newly opened Bincho Yakitori in Oxo Tower most of the above are offered. At the foot of the list of possibilities there is an announcement: "Other chicken parts available on request. "Feet, maybe? Beak?

At Oxo Tower the view is the thing. But despite a more intimate relationship with the river than the outlook from the eighth floor, the second floor site has seen catering businesses struggle. Several have come and gone in fairly quick succession. It is only after running the bar and brasserie tamesa@oxo at the western end for over a year that Dominic Ford has opened up the far eastern end of the premises.

In what seems like an astute move, Ford and chef David Miney have come up with a concept which pitches a rival to the river view. If you don't get a window seat, there is the alternative of watching the team of chefs led by Tokyo-born Hidenari Ohata fanning the flames of the six open grills in front of the kitchen where yakitori and kushiyaki (non-bird ingredients) are cooked to order.

We visited on the opening night and window tables were available. Extraordinarily, it wasn't raining. The setting sun gilded the ripples of the incoming tide and my friend Ian invoked Turkey's Golden Horn. Looking at the unveiled gleaming south side of St Paul's Cathedral was another reason to turn our backs on the grills. The yakitori and kushiyaki are excitingly cheap. There is negi (skewered spring onion) for 60p. Negima (chicken and spring onion) is £1.20. Of course, they are bite-size.

Assuming a role as remorseless as Colonel Saito in the film of The Bridge On the River Kwai, I take the ordering for four of us in hand, asking for two of every item. The eel is particularly good and among the chicken bits, the oysters - those little nuggets that lie in the spoonshaped section of the back-bone - come out tops.

Aubergine with sesame and miso are two tiny little boats of savoury mush. Ian announces that he likes these items much better than "those liquorice allsorts you buy at Boots". He means sushi.

Beef rib on the bone, pork belly, lamb cutlets and quail are fine, except that after a while their brush with the sweetish soy-based sauce and the caramelisation of the cooking process, render them samey and increasingly uninteresting.

Colonel Saito may well have gone too big on the meat, but edamame beans, various miso soups, fried tofu, kim chee and Japanese greens were also chosen from other sections of the menu.

A traditional finish to a meal or snack of yakitori (snackitori?) is ochazuke, a soupy base of rice and green tea topped with pickles and other savoury ingredients. A variety are served at Bincho, but we opted for desserts of yuzu pannacotta and layered-banana cake with green tea ice cream which were a bit eastern in their unwillingness to embrace the idea of the real treat inherent in the concept of dessert.

The service is swift and charming. Sake is served in glasses which reside in square wooden boxes which hold the overflow as the drink is poured so generously as to tip over the edge. A selection of Japanese teas, beers and shochu (distilled spirit) are also excellent yakitori accompaniments.

Probably we tried to make too much of a meal of it at Bincho. An Izakaya, as it is known in Japan, is more suited to casual grazing. I think children would absolutely love it.

Bincho Yakitori
2nd Floor, Barge House Street, SE1 9PH