Unagi is one of my favorite types of cuisine, consistently ranking high on my list. However, many of the restaurants I want to visit are quite far away, and there are few options nearby. The delicious and reasonably priced places are usually extremely popular and hard to book. Kabuto is one of those places. Typically, when I visit an unagi restaurant, I enjoy appetizers like unagi-zaku, umaki, bone crackers, and chawanmushi while waiting for my unaju to be prepared. These are the standard menu items at unagi restaurants. Shirayaki and liver soup are usually served at the same time as the unaju. The wait for the unaju is about 30 minutes. I find myself torn between wanting to savor the long-awaited unaju and the urge to devour it while it's still hot. Ultimately, the desire to enjoy it while it's delicious wins out, and I finish the unaju in about 20 minutes. Generally, I imagine that my stay at an unagi restaurant lasts around 60 minutes. This time, I was invited by a regular to revisit the much-admired Kabuto. The atmosphere of the restaurant has a nostalgic Showa retro feel, which I quite like. I ordered the water eggplant with vinegar miso as an appetizer and yudofu (which is incredibly delicious!), and the full course of unagi began. I enjoyed freshly grilled rare unagi skewers, including eri-yaki, shio-yaki, hire-yaki, liver-yaki, kushi-maki, one-bite kabayaki, natural liver-yaki, and natural head-yaki, which are hard to find elsewhere. I also had the chance to compare natural and farmed unagi in both shirayaki and unagi don. The unagi itself is so delicious that both the natural and farmed versions are incredibly tasty! I want to visit more often to refine my unagi tasting skills, and I hope to come back next month, but I worry about not being able to make a reservation. As I check the time, I realize I've easily been here for over two hours. The friendly personality of the chef, who sincerely engages with the unagi, is likely another reason for the restaurant's immense popularity. (I will only upload the photos that turned out well, as many of them are blurry.)