Bincho grills fish over a wood fire in the middle of the dining room at Mega Bangna in east Bangkok, then serves it as a Japanese set meal. My wife and I have been going back since we found it, twice in July 2026 alone. The best part of the menu is the part I cannot read: a list of seasonal fish, most of which I could not identify if you put them in front of me. Here is what the sets cost, how the meal arrives and where to sit.

The Bincho shopfront sign at Mega Bangna under a slatted timber ceiling.
Bincho sits on the ground floor at Mega Bangna, on the open-air side under the timber canopy.

What Bincho Actually Is

Bincho is not a Japanese import. It is the sixth brand from MAGURO Group, a Thai restaurant company, which opened this first branch at Mega Bangna in July 2025. A second has since opened at One Bangkok.

The format is teishoku, the Japanese set meal built around one main dish with rice, soup and small sides. Three things carry it. The first is the irori, an open hearth sitting in the middle of the room with whole fish staked on skewers around a wood fire. The second is binchotan, the dense white charcoal that gives the place its name and the grill its heat. The third is the hagama, the aluminium pot your rice cooks in and arrives in, lid on, still steaming, on its own wooden stand.

You can read all of this in the menu, which opens on a page called The Way Of Bincho explaining the hearth, the charcoal and the rice pot before it lists a single dish. Most restaurants would put that on a wall and hope somebody looks. Bincho puts it where you will actually read it, which is while you are deciding what to order.

Whole fish on skewers standing around a burning wood fire on a tiled open hearth at Bincho.
The irori runs through the middle of the room. The fish stand around the fire rather than sitting over it.

Order A Fish You Cannot Name

The fish list is the reason to come. It shifts with the season and the names run in Japanese with a Thai transliteration underneath, so unless you read one of those two you are ordering blind. That is the fun of it.

Sets run from ฿390 for the saba shioyaki, which is salted grilled mackerel, up to ฿520 for the seasonal akauo. Going à la carte takes about ฿100 off each of them, though the set is where the value sits. Sashimi adds ฿190 to any set.

My habit here is to order the one I cannot name, then come back another week for a different one I cannot name. The akauo went first, on the evening visit, chosen purely because I had no idea what it was. It came out gold-skinned and scored across the top, hot enough to steam when the skin split, with a wedge of citrus, a mound of salt and grated daikon on the slate beside it. I would never have found it by reading the menu.

Akauo shioyaki at Bincho, a grilled fish with crisp gold skin on a dark slate plate with salt, grated daikon, a citrus wedge and a hijiki side dish.
The akauo shioyaki, a ฿520 seasonal set. Salt, grated daikon and a citrus wedge are the whole seasoning.

A week later we came back and I ordered the saba shioyaki at ฿390, salted grilled mackerel and the one name on that list I actually recognised. My wife went the other way. Hers came out butterflied and opened flat across the slate with the tail still on, paler and leaner than the akauo, with far more to pick at. We still do not know what it was. Two visits in, only one of the fish on our table has been a name I could have told you in advance.

A whole grilled fish opened out flat on a dark slate plate at Bincho with salt, grated daikon, a citrus wedge and pickled vegetables.
My wife ordered this one on the second visit. Neither of us knows what it was.

What Comes With The Set

A set lands as a tray of small bowls and it helps to know what they are before you start guessing. Across the two visits ours held some combination of the following:

  • Miso soup with wakame and tofu, in a wooden bowl.
  • Chawanmushi, the savoury steamed egg custard, hot in a lidded cup.
  • Two or three pieces of sashimi with wasabi and shredded daikon.
  • Chilled tomatoes on a skewer sitting in a light dashi.
  • A croquette under a slick of brown sauce.
  • Pickles, simmered vegetables and a small bowl of hijiki.
Small side dishes at Bincho including chawanmushi, simmered vegetables, a croquette in sauce, tomatoes on a skewer and two pieces of sashimi.
The sides come out together. Nothing here is filler.

Rice is the part people underrate. It reaches the table in the hagama with the lid on, sitting on its own wooden board, so you serve yourself with a flat wooden paddle. There is more in that pot than one bowl. Nobody mentions it, so the first time you take a polite scoop and then notice, halfway through the fish, that you have two more servings waiting.

A hand lifting rice with a wooden paddle from an aluminium hagama pot at the table.
The rice comes in the pot and you serve it yourself. There is more in there than one bowl.

There is a card on the table explaining what goes on what. Pineapple aka miso and the house bushi bincho sauce are for the fish. Shoyu goes where you would expect. Shichimi togarashi is for the rice and the skewers. Read it or ignore it, but pineapple miso on grilled fish is better than it has any right to be.

A wooden tray of condiments at Bincho holding shichimi togarashi, a shoyu dispenser and two lidded jars of sauce on a tiled counter.
Every seat gets its own set. The two lidded jars are the aka miso and the bushi bincho sauce.

Where To Sit

The irori is the best seat in the room and also the warmest. It is an open wood fire with no glass in front of it, in a room in Bangkok, with counter seats wrapped around three sides. We took the counter on the first visit and the smell alone justified it: woodsmoke and grilling fish from two feet away, which is not something a kitchen behind a wall will ever give you. It did run a little warm. On the second visit we sat at a table further back and the difference was noticeable inside a minute.

So pick your side of the trade. Take the counter for the smoke and the view of the cooks turning skewers, knowing you will feel the fire. Ask for a table if you would rather eat cool. Both were free at the weekend.

What It Costs And When To Go

Every popular Japanese chain out this way seems to come with a queue attached. Bincho does not, at least not one worth complaining about. Five minutes at Saturday lunchtime was the whole of it. On the evening visit we walked straight in. Set against the two or three hours that conveyor sushi at Sushiro can cost you at a peak hour, that alone is an argument for coming here instead.

The brass plate by the door gives the hours as 10:00 to 22:00 Sunday to Thursday and 10:00 to 23:00 on Friday and Saturday.

Menu prices are all before tax. Add 7% VAT and 10% service to whatever you total up, which turns the ฿520 akauo set into roughly ฿612 and the ฿390 saba set into roughly ฿459 by the time it reaches the till. I kept neither receipt, so read those as the price of the set rather than the price of the evening. Drinks, edamame and a plate of yakitori push it up from there. Even so, for eating out in Bangkok a complete grilled fish teishoku at that number sits closer to Cantonese roast meat money than to anything you would call an occasion.

There are two ways to bring that number down and we used both. MAGURO Group runs the usual Thai card promotions across its brands, so on the evening visit I redeemed KTC points for a ฿400 group voucher before we paid, which cost nothing but a tap in the app.

The second way is the loyalty scheme, the Give More+ Club, which is free to join through the group's LINE account. It runs four tiers on cumulative spend across every MAGURO restaurant rather than this one alone: Welcome up to ฿5,000, Closer from ฿5,001, Together from ฿60,001 and Forever above ฿150,001. Closer is the first tier that unlocks a birthday menu, which is how the oden reached our table on the second visit without reaching the bill. Sign up on the way in rather than working it out on the way out.

A cast iron pot of oden simmering over a small flame at the table with the wooden lid lifted and steam rising.
The oden, which came free on the Closer tier birthday menu, simmering over its own flame at the table.

We keep going back and the reason is not complicated. The fish is good, the sets are complete and the bill for two lands where an ordinary week can absorb it. Order the one you cannot pronounce.