Raku chef focuses on chicken – raw and cooked – at new restaurant

Raku’s multiple James Beard Award-nominee chef Mitsuo Endo has a new local eatery called Raku Toridokoro that will begin serving customers on Friday night.

Located in the space at 4439 W. Flamingo Road that was previously home to his short-lived teppanyaki restaurant Tatsujin X, it’s a yakitori-style grill restaurant focusing almost exclusively on chicken.

Not all of the dishes are grilled, however, or even cooked. One of the most jaw-dropping dishes Endo has been offering during preview dinners has been chicken sashimi: raw slices of chicken breast, chicken liver and chicken gizzards. (They offer a hot stone for those who would prefer to cook them up a bit.)

Another dish, chicken soft bones, consisted of batter-fried cartilage served over Brussels sprouts.

Have no fear, however; there are plenty of more approachable parts of the chicken you can order, simply seasoned and cooked on skewers over hot coals.

Contact Al Mancini at amancini@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlManciniVegas on Twitter.