• Sights
• Restaurants
• Hotels
• Entertainment
• Shopping
• Travel Tips
• Features

Restaurants Overview

Though Tokyo is still stubbornly provincial in many ways, whatever the rest of the world has pronounced good in the realm of dining eventually makes its way here: French, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern, Latin American. And at last count, there were more than 200,000 bars and restaurants in the city.

Restaurants in Japan naturally expect most of their clients to be Japanese, and the Japanese are the world's champion modifiers. Only the most serious restaurateurs refrain from editing some of the authenticity out of foreign cuisines; in areas like Shibuya, Harajuku, and Shinjuku, all too many of the foreign restaurants cater to students and young office workers who come mainly for the fun'iki (atmosphere). Choose a French bistro or Italian trattoria in these areas carefully, and expect to pay dearly for the real thing. That said, you can count on the fact that the city's best foreign cuisine is world-class. Several of France's two- and three-star restaurants, for example, have established branches and joint ventures in Tokyo, and they regularly send their chefs over to supervise. The style almost everywhere is nouvelle cuisine: small portions, with picture-perfect garnishes and light sauces. More and more, you find interesting fusions of French and Japanese culinary traditions served in poetically beautiful presentations. Recipes make imaginative use of fresh Japanese ingredients, like shimeji mushrooms and local wild vegetables.

Tokyo has also embraced the range and virtuosity of Italian cuisine; chances are good that the finer trattorias here will measure up to even Tuscan standards. Indian food is also consistently good -- and relatively inexpensive. Chinese food is the most consistently modified; it can be very good, but it pales in comparison to fare in Hong Kong or Beijing.

A few pointers are in order on the geography of food and drink. The farther "downtown" you go -- into Shitamachi -- the less likely you are to find the real thing in foreign (that is, non-Japanese) cuisine. There's superb Japanese food all over the city, but aficionados of sushi swear (with excellent reason) by Tsukiji, where the fish market supplies the neighborhood's restaurants with the freshest ingredients; the restaurants in turn serve the biggest portions and charge the most reasonable prices. Asakusa takes pride in its tempura restaurants, but tempura is reliable almost everywhere, especially at branches of the well-established, citywide chains like Tenya and Tsunahachi.

Tokyoites love to wine and dine at first-rate establishments, some of which are grotesquely expensive. But have no fear: the city has a fair number of bargains too -- good cooking of all sorts that you can enjoy on even a modest budget. Every department store and skyscraper office building devotes at least one floor to restaurants; none of them stand out, but all are inexpensive and quite passable places to lunch. Food and drink, even at street stalls, are safe wherever you go. When in doubt, note that Tokyo's top-rated international hotels also have some of the city's best places to eat and drink.