"Meet you at the fish shack in Meguro!" It was a suggestion, a rendezvous, an invitation to check out a new restaurant. But more than anything, in these days of straitened economics, it was an offer we couldn't refuse.

Opened late last year, the fish shack — actual name Marutomi Suisan — is a recent arrival, but the concept certainly isn't. Take an old wood-frame building that's seen many a better day, strip out the inner walls and half the upper floor, plumb in a rudimentary kitchen, hang up some colorful fishermen's banners, and presto: a funky, friendly, budget-level seafood izakaya (Japanese pub).

The idea of the scruffy, retro diner is big right now, with perhaps the primeexample of the genre being the converted gas station that houses the Nogizaka branch of Uoshin. But it's the location, tucked away down a cul-de-sac just off genteel Meguro-dori and barely spitting distance from hoity-toity Shirokanedai that has made Marutomi Suisan such an instant hit.