COEDO Taproom

Causeway Bay’s Fashion Walk Food Street is brimming with restaurants and bars, not all good. But this latest opening by the award-winning Coedo brewery in Saitama is helping raise the bar on quality in this corner of town, starting with its excellent array of beers on tap – hailing from both the eponymous label and several cult favourites, local (Young Masters) and international (Brewdog, Mikkeller, Bulwark). The venue is a cross between a brew pub and a classy yakitori joint, with high tables and stools, bar seating, and a view of the kitchen where chefs set to work grilling skewers of meat and vegetables over charcoal.

Newcomers to the Coedo portfolio of brews will want to go straight to the beer tasting platter, which offers five stout servings of their greatest hits: from the delicate Ruri, a pilsner-style tipple with a crisp finish, to the surprising Shikkoku, an aged dark lager that is deep and glossy but with a remarkably light, coffee-esque aroma and flavour. Beniaka is a slightly more oddball option, being brewed with roasted Kintoki sweet potatoes from Coedo’s home region to a sweet and slightly toffee-like finish.

In terms of food offerings, Coedo is strong – the list of kushiyaki is a little more interesting than most, with classics such as chicken and leek skewers pepped up with some yuzu kosho, or grilled ox tongue topped with (not quite enough) chimichurri sauce. We recommend the pork short rib skewers with dollops of spicy miso (so good with the slightly fizzy Shiro white beer). Not all are successes – the duck varieties are just not as juicy as their chicken counterparts. There are rice and noodle dishes too, should you feel like you need something more substantial to line the stomach – the homemade chicken soup ramen with hints of yuzu (you’ll see shreds of zest here and there) is delicious, with springy al dente noodles, and the minced chicken rice with a softly set egg is comforting and generously proportioned.