Tokyo Sakana 東京酒場 @ Kaohsiung

After a long day at Chiayi for the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum, we settled for a nice cold beer and simple eats along the mother river of Kaohsiung.

Tokyo Sakana is a large, three-storey kuaichao (“quick stir-fry) and beer house located on Wufu Road near the Kaohsiung Bridge on the Love River. Its huge sign and bright lights make it very eye-catching. The restaurant’s decor resembles a Japanese izakaya, and it offers both Taiwanese and Japanese cuisine with a wide variety of dishes, ensuring that even large groups can find something to their liking.

The place exudes an Okinawa izakaya charm, but the menu is definitely very Taiwanese with a few of Japanese izakaya classics. The decor has seen better times, but that’s also part of the charm.

Sichuan saliva chicken, known as Kou Shui Ji (口水鸡), is a famous cold appetiser featuring tender poached chicken swimming in a vibrant, spicy, and numbing red oil sauce. The name literally means “saliva chicken” because the rich blend of spices is so intensely appetising that it makes you salivate. Versions outside of Sichuan has been adapted to suit the less spice-hardened palates, and the Kaohsiung version is slightly sweeter than normal. I like cold chicken of any kind as long as they are not dried out and overcooked. This was not bad.

凤梨虾球 Pineapple shrimp balls were a favourite of mine when I was a child, and my mom made this at home very often. Not your Japanese tempura, where the prawn remains straight as a bow. These shrimps curled and formed a crunchy ball of deep fried goodness, drizzled with mayonnaise. Pineapple usually comes as a chopped up canned version, but this being the capital of pineapple (Kaohsiung was one of the major exporter of pineapple during the Japanese colonisation period) they were the fresh version. Princess loved the sprinkles, something I had not seen for a very long time.

Fried rice in Taiwan is not the Cantonese style where the rice are distinctly separated and each grain of rice is coated with egg. Fried rice Taiwanese-style is a sticky mess with a very peppery taste, something your Chinese mom whipped up when she had no time to cook. This hit the spot for nostalgia not taste.

Port city Kaohsiung is close to fishery grounds and seafood is as fresh as it gets. These Venus 文蛤) were from the nearby mud plains, and yet they had no sand, something I failed to master when I was cleaning them at home. When clams are so fresh, you just need a splash of sake and then steam them for a wonderful good eat.

I used to order this deep fried big intestines when I was posted in Hong Kong as the Chachaanteng below my apartment made a really good one, and they delivered it to you at home in the era before Uber Eats and Doordash. But they are really bad for your health, as offals are high in fats and usually unhygienic. These ones were too soft for my liking, and not cleaned thoroughly.

五更肠旺 (“Wu Geng Chang Wang“) is a famous, fiery, and savoury Taiwanese-Sichuan casserole dish. It features tender pork intestines (“肠”) and soft duck or pig blood jelly (“旺”, symbolising prosperity) simmered with salted mustard greens in a rich, spicy, and heavily numbing bean-paste broth, traditionally served bubbling hot in a small claypot. This one had added bamboo shoots, a bonus for us. And we found it strangely sweet.

Ayu fish 香鱼 or sweetfish farming were introduced by the Japanese to Taiwan, and since then I have always enjoyed these delicious fish when I come to Taiwan as they are not seasonal like in Japan. But the best time to enjoy them is summer as the innards will be clean and the cavities inside the fish are filled with roe. Delicious.

As this was already late summer, bamboo shoots are becoming rare and not as sweet and crunchy as the ones at the beginning of the season. But with modern food processing, the shelf life for these delicate shoots are extended for another couple of months. In Taiwan, they are served simple, boiled, cut and a side of Kewpie mayonnaise.

So far, the only vegetable we had was the bamboo shoots, we ordered some sautéed loofahs with Venus clams to supplement our fibre intake for the day. The loofahs were crunchy and young and the clams provided the umami.

And to satisfy our craving for more shellfish, Princess requested for Manila clams, her favourite clam type, sautéed with Thai basil – a style common in Taiwan. Strangely again, the dish was sweeter than what we would get in Taipei.

We went in the evening, before the peak drinking hours, and the food came out very quickly. The flavours were authentic, though slightly on the salty side, making it a good match for beer. There’s no AC in the restaurant so it’s cooler to sit along the pavement or in the balcony during the hot and humid summer evenings. The place livens up as the evening wears on.

Tokyo Sakana 東京酒場
No. 152, Wufu 3rd Rd, Boxiao Village, Qianjin District, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan 801
高雄市前金區五福三路152號
Tel : +886 7 282 0819

Visited Jul 2026