Our mission is to share our love for Japanese cuisine with everyone

Bird’s Nest was born after co-founders Marie and Emi wanted to bring the art and taste of yakitori back to Australia. With a background in hospitality and food chains, they packed up and took their families across to Japan to learn everything they could about the local cuisine and cooking techniques. They received traditional training from expert yakitori chefs that would form the benchmark for Bird’s Nest’s kitchen setup, food preparation style, and the menu design.

After a further twelve months of planning back in Australia the first Bird’s Nest Yakitori Bar Japanese restaurant was opened at West End in Brisbane, followed by a second location in Fortitude Valley. Realising they had created a unique balance between traditional Japanese yakitori and approachable modern cuisine, Bird's Nest continues to open more yakitori bar Japanese restaurant locations around Brisbane, ensuring that even more people get to share our obsession and love for food!

Ingredients at Bird’s Nest are all delivered fresh and are freshly prepared on-site each day. Dishes are hand-made and made-to-order without any machine processing or mass production. All the meat, seafood, veggies, and other major ingredients are charcoal grilled in the traditional yakitori style—something that’s highly unique to Bird’s Nest. The in-house yakitori grills are fuelled using traditional binchotan (premium white charcoal) that are hand-fanned by the chefs for accurate temperature control.

The menu design at Bird’s Nest is also centred around the ethos of ‘Japanese for everyone’, with a wide range of dishes, styles and ingredients for every taste and dietary requirement. The combination of yakitori with modern Japanese gourmet makes the menu even more approachable, blending the delicious and unique traditional charcoal taste with dishes that are familiar to most Aussies.

Whether you’re a spring chicken or an old chook, Bird’s Nest Japanese restaurants have something for everyone!

Traditional binchotan (premium white charcoal)

The in-house yakitori grills in each Bird's Nest Japanese restaurant location are fuelled using traditional binchotan (premium white charcoal) that are expertly heated and hand-fanned by the chefs for accurate temperature control. This wonderfully traditional yakitori style of cooking is highly unique to Bird’s Nest, adding a distinctive flavour profile and smokiness to the menus' meat, seafood, veggies, and other key ingredients.

Binchotan is a type of charcoal traditionally used in Japanese cooking. Its use dates back to the Edo period, which is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan. Binchotan is made by pyrolysing wood in a kiln at approximately 240°C for 120 hours, then finishing the process by raising the temperature to around 1,000°C. Binchotan takes the natural shape of the wood that was used to make it, and is almost 100% carbon. This means it burns very purely without odour, with high heat release that really brings out the flavour of our food.

The Bird's Nest story: from inspiration and training in Japan, to opening multiple restaurants in Brisbane

The Bird’s Nest story started when co-founders Marie and Emi wanted to bring the art and taste of yakitori back to Australia. With a background in hospitality and food chains, they packed up and took their families across to Japan to learn everything they could about the local cuisine and cooking techniques. They received traditional training from expert yakitori chefs that would form the benchmark for Bird’s Nest’s kitchen setup, food preparation style, and the menu design.