Welcome to Madrid

Twenty years ago, Japanese chef Tomoyuki Ikenagaés and his wife Eiko opened Janatomo in Madrid, a restaurant specialising in Japanese cuisine. Two months later, and given the lack of customers, they turned the venue into a Chinese restaurant. Now that Japanese cuisine is all the rage, Janamoto has reintroduced Japanese dishes alongside the traditional Chinese food. This is a serious restaurant in which the children of the founders, Jun and Hitoshi Ikenaga, man the kitchen. It is like a Japanese tavern that also offers Chinese dishes. In both cases, they offer orthodox dishes prepared with fine quality ingredients: the frying oil is renovated daily; the poultry is top class and the pork comes from Iberian pigs. The Japanese tempura is great, the Miso soup is mouth-watering and the selection of sashimi (slices of raw fish), the roasted eel niguiri and the tuna sushi are all delicious. They have tables equipped with yakiniku (barbecues), which are unique in Europe, where customers roast slices of Iberian pork and veal, on a metal grill. Everything is smoke and fat free thanks to a prodigious built-in extraction system.