Opened in 2020 by a husband-and-wife duo who relocated to Tokyo from Brooklyn, Freeman Shokudo has built up a solid fanbase with its excellent barbecue. The laid-back smokehouse in the quiet inner Shibuya neighbourhood of Nishihara doesn’t serve your typical American barbecue fare, showcasing instead a unique style that proprietor Jeremy Freeman perfected over the years at his backyard BBQ parties back in Brooklyn.
The eatery specialises in pit-smoked barbecue, with highlights including pastrami (from ¥2,400) cured for seven days, dried for 24 hours, and smoked at a low temperature for twelve hours before being served. Each serving of it weighing in at a meaty 250g, the pastrami beef here is made from US beef brisket, cured and smoked over Japanese oak and rubbed with spices such as black pepper and coriander.
Drawing on Jeremy’s Jewish background and his wife’s Japanese cooking, the dishes at Freeman were developed and perfected through trial and error and get their flavour from a proprietary blend of spices. Besides the authentic pastrami sandwiches, dishes not to be missed include the signature tender spare ribs (from ¥3,600), smoked mackerel (¥1,500) and flavourful pulled pork sandwiches, all of which are smoked in the shop’s custom-built steel smoker.