I’m Cher. I started this space to trace the way cities speak through food and drink—and to share my reflections on sake, culture, and the stories behind the table.
I’m originally from Beijing. I completed my undergraduate studies at Purdue, earned my first master’s degree at NYU, and I’m now beginning a new chapter at Keio University. I believe every city has its own cultural rhythm, and the dining table is one of the most expressive and intimate ways to understand a place.
I love visiting fine dining restaurants for their craft and imagination, but I’m just as interested in the stories behind small, humble spots—the devotion, the choices, and the people who make them special. Through words and photographs, I hope to share these experiences with you.
I’m also an SSI-certified International Kikisake-shi, Shochu Kikisake-shi, and a sake instructor, and I continue to contribute in my own way to promoting sake culture.
During a previous trip to Tokyo, I was taken to a yakitori restaurant, ‘Yakitori Shinohara.’
The restaurant sits in Nishi-Azabu, an area packed with famous restaurants. It was Saturday night, and we’d booked the second seating at 8:30pm — arriving five minutes early, we already found more than ten people waiting outside. Business was clearly good — fully booked.
This restaurant is known for using a rare pathogen-free chicken — ‘Kyoto Koshihikari chicken.’ It’s the world’s only chicken breed that’s safe and pathogen-free enough to still meet raw-consumption standards even after a month of aging. Known for its buttery texture, it’s been described in write-ups as comparable to prime tuna belly.
Since Hideki Kosaka, the developer of Koshihikari chicken, only supplies it to chefs he trusts, it’s genuinely hard to come by, earning it the nickname ‘phantom chicken.’
The restaurant’s own website positions itself as yakitori kaiseki, set-menu style — mainly sashimi and yakitori grilled over Kishu binchotan charcoal, with various sakana dishes and a rice pot made from Koshihikari chicken woven throughout, priced at ¥16,000.
Adding the pairing — 7 different sakes — was also ¥16,000.
Kyoto Koshihikari chicken wonton soup
Shira-ae | Shine Muscat, blueberry
After being seated, a bowl of clear wonton soup arrived — chicken that’s great to eat isn’t necessarily great for stock, and the flavor here was quite thin, with the wonton wrapper on the thicker side.
But right after, a tiny portion of shira-ae was a pleasant surprise. The fruit’s clean sweetness was genuinely lovely, and the tofu’s milky, slightly sweet flavor combined with a slightly gauzy texture made for a bright, well-balanced whole.
Koshihikari chicken sashimi
The chicken sashimi platter included gizzard, liver, thigh, and breast. Never mind the latter two — this was genuinely the first time I’d seen raw-edible chicken offal.
The gizzard, though deep red, couldn’t hide its bright freshness at the edges — a genuinely memorable crunch. The liver was visibly rosy pink, cleanly prepared, and paired with sesame oil that amplified its delicate texture.
Both pieces of offal were genuinely memorable, and instantly proved the quality of the chicken.
The thigh meat was fairly standard, but the breast — which I’d expected to show more obvious muscle fiber — turned out surprisingly tight, with an almost cottony texture.
Minced chicken thigh, soy-cured ground cherry
A twist on the classic beef tartare pairing, with the egg yolk upgraded to a juicy ground cherry. But the promising-sounding combination didn’t leave much of an impression when eaten.
Yakitori | Shoulder
The yakitori started with chicken shoulder. The charcoal flavor and fat were beautifully balanced, the thin skin was perfectly crisp, and the meat’s juices burst in the mouth.
It instantly sparked a craving for good grilled food.
Two-year snow-aged potato
It had both a potato’s fluffy, starchy quality and a sweet potato’s faint sweetness, with a very subtle fermented tang lingering at the finish. A modest-looking little potato that was anything but ordinary.
Paired with a special Junmai from Hiryu-ki, which brought out some spice notes — genuinely interesting.
Chawanmushi
The eggs in the chawanmushi come from Tanaka Farm in Saitama Prefecture, just north of Tokyo — a concept not unlike ‘we use giant watermelons from a farm on the outskirts of the city.’
Worth mentioning here, though — chef Shinohara genuinely puts a lot of effort into personally visiting producers, checking the production and quality of ingredients himself.
He’s traveled to Hokkaido in search of quality cheese, and to Kajitani Farm in Hiroshima in search of quality herbs. By communicating directly with producers, he brings out the true character of each ingredient.
The chawanmushi’s surface, smooth and glossy, looked simple, clean, and genuinely inviting. Surprisingly, alongside the fragrant tenderness, there was also a faint milky flavor.
Scooping up the last spoonful revealed mozzarella hidden at the bottom of the bowl. A tiny bowl of chawanmushi, with a thoughtful touch in every bite.
Yakitori | Akami (lean thigh)
Yakitori | Chicken breast
Yakitori | Ground cherry (chochin)
After the chawanmushi, the yakitori course officially began.
Akami is the low-yield cut from the inner thigh, tighter in texture than the shoulder. The breast was rosy pink, paired with wasabi, wonderfully tender.
The chochin (ground cherry-style egg-topped skewer) was genuinely gorgeous — lightly cooked on the outside, with a perfectly gooey, rich, mellow center inside.
Yakitori | Chicken tail
Yakitori | Chicken heart
Yakitori | Gizzard
Three courses followed in quick succession — the tail was crisp in one bite, bursting with fatty aroma; the heart amplified the charcoal smokiness; and the gizzard was so crisp you could hear it crunch as you bit into it.
Shinohara’s use of salt on the yakitori was genuinely restrained — wasabi and grated ginger alternated to just barely set off the meat’s texture and flavor.
Chicken liver pâté, walnut bread
Tofu skin, blue cheese, honey
Chicken tataki
A few dishes were woven in between the yakitori courses.
The chicken liver pâté was maximally milky and delicate, with a faint sweetness lingering afterward. The grilled blue cheese, oozy at the center, paired with honey as expected — but the cheese’s quality dragged the whole dish down. The thigh-and-breast tataki, still slightly pink and raw in the middle, was extremely tender and great with drinks.
Chicken wings
I’d already thought using LV coasters at a small yakitori joint was a bit much, but then the server brought over a little LV box, containing black gloves meant for the next course — the chicken wings.
Though the sakana dishes were a bit uneven, Shinohara’s salt-grilled yakitori consistently delivered. The edges of the wing were lightly charred, the fat under the skin had rendered into a juicy richness, and the meat was cooked just right.
This was genuinely the dream chicken wing.
Spring roll
Tsukune (chicken meatball skewer)
The spring roll was a real letdown — after frying, it turned stiff, as if made with frozen wonton wrappers.
The chicken meatball, on the other hand, was a pleasant surprise — its round shape sitting cutely on the plate. Biting into the center, the meat was still faintly pink.
A touch of salt perfectly balanced the charcoal and the fat — genuinely satisfying.
Chicken cartilage
Esophagus
Neck meat
Since it’s not often we make it to this restaurant, we added three more cuts of yakitori — the esophagus had a wonderfully crisp texture.
While we were still working through the yakitori, the sous chef came out carrying a large clay pot, flashing his signature smile as he showed off tonight’s rice pot to the guests.
Rice pot (kamameshi)
Chicken broth noodles
Two staple courses followed — the rice pot combined chicken with in-season shishito peppers and butter-scented corn. Generous ingredients, but the flavor wasn’t especially compelling.
The chicken broth noodles, on the other hand, echoed the wonton soup from the start of the meal, with a thin layer of oil visible on top making it noticeably more fragrant. The noodles were cooked slightly underdone, and finishing the bowl left just the right amount of satisfaction.
Taken as a whole, the meal flowed smoothly.
You could see the chef’s skill and care in every dish, and the timing on the yakitori was consistently satisfying. Most of the counter seats seemed to be regulars, and the 7-bottle pairing was genuinely not skimped on — real value for money.
It’s still fairly easy to book right now — I’ll be thinking about coming back.
Yakitori Shinohara
〒106-0031 Nishi-Azabu Shino Building 1F, 1-4-40 Nishi-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Finally, finally, finally, finally, finally — I got a booking at the sushi restaurant with the highest Tabelog score in all of Japan, nationally ranked #1, one of the hardest reservations in Tokyo and arguably the world: Nihonbashi Kakigaracho Sugita. Chef Takaaki Sugita is regarded as the finest Edomae sushi craftsman working in Japan today.
Over three consecutive days, I also visited his top disciple’s restaurant, Sushi Hashimoto, and Sushi Riku, opened by a later-generation disciple and an instant sensation, plus Sushi Yamato, which I’d already been to before. That completes the whole Sugita lineage of restaurants in Tokyo.
You can find this photo on Sugita-san’s social media accounts — his disciples and grand-disciples, all of whom have since gone independent and become the kind of chefs capable of running their own acclaimed restaurants.
From left to right: Eijiro Yamamoto (Fuku-zushi), Riku Toda (Sushi Riku), Hiroyuki Hashimoto (Sushi Hashimoto), Takaaki Sugita (Sugita), Yamato Yasui (Sushi Yamato), Kazuki Noguchi (Kotan), Yuki Sassa (Nihonryori Sassa).
The perfect embodiment of Edomae sushi, the application of aging technique, an absolute sense of flavor balance, and a level of counter hospitality that’s extremely comfortable to be around.
No need for more flattering words — this piece wants to share things in a more documentary way: comparing side by side, among these acclaimed restaurants under the Sugita lineage, which ones are worth booking months in advance, and which are worth paying up to 6,000 RMB in scalper fees for a seat.
✦ • ✦
Nihonbashi Kakigaracho Sugita
Tabelog Gold Award 🏅 1-33-6 Nihonbashi Kakigaracho, Chuo City, Tokyo ¥44,000++
For the noon lunch seating, by 11:55 all eight counter guests were already waiting at the door. After sitting down and a brief exchange of greetings, the counter fell silent again — everyone sat up straight, a bit of tension in the air, as if holding their breath in earnest anticipation of the meal ahead.
It was, of all people, Sugita-san himself — busy prepping sardines — who broke the silence.
“Everyone quietly staring at me while I debone this fish is kind of nerve-wracking (whispering)… everyone quietly staring at me debone this fish is REALLY nerve-wracking… (even quieter whisper)”
Fava Bean
Squid, Flounder
Kue (Longtooth Grouper), Chiba
Iwashi-maki (Sardine Roll)
A light opener — the fava bean carried a faint fermented, natto-like note, its soft saltiness and umami seeping through gently. Sashimi came in squid and flounder, the latter showing full flavor as you chewed.
The kue smelled incredible the moment it hit the table — visibly translucent white, with fat distributed evenly throughout; the half-cooked texture pushed both the fat and the sweetness to the extreme.
Iwashi-maki has become popular at sushi restaurants back home, and Sugita is the very creator of the dish. Only after tasting the original did I realize it could balance both a knockout deliciousness and a long, drawn-out finish so precisely.
Same combination of sardine, scallion, ginger, and shiso — Sugita-san instructed, “use more wasabi, less soy sauce.” The fish was tender and fatty with a hint of crunch, the ginger’s sweetness and the herb’s green aroma rushing to the front, the umami spreading through the mouth in small waves before gathering back at the tip of the tongue into a long, concentrated finish.
I’ve had plenty of iwashi-maki, including his disciples’ versions, but this time my understanding was completely rewritten. Turns out the same recipe and the soul of the cooking really do live on two different planes.
Monkfish Liver, Oyster
Grilled Tuna Skewer
Add-On | Miso-Cured Herring Roe
Add-On | Grilled Hokkigai with Ginger Soy Sauce
By the time the iwashi-maki was finished, we looked up and realized it was already past one. Add in the drinking snacks that followed, the tuna skewer, and the extras — the otsumami section alone took a full two hours.
Watching Sugita-san unhurriedly prep the fish for what’s next — the movements were seamless and fluid, almost no pause for a moment, not a single wasted motion. The sense of mastery and ease made you wonder if this was a scene rehearsed in advance for a film.
The regular sitting in the center seat had already settled in, starting to share stories with Sugita-san of his own accord. Sugita-san chatted easily in return, occasionally teasing other guests at the counter and the disciples standing ramrod-straight behind him. Both the sense of boundaries and the humor were pitched just right.
After two highly memorable dishes, the meal settled into a calmer stretch. The small drinking plate was paired with a glass of Youno Tori, its sweetness complementing the marinade nicely. But the charcoal-grilled tuna skewer arrived at a middling temperature, its excessive fattiness and a flavor hard to distinguish from canned tuna leaving us a bit puzzled.
Sugita’s otsumami extras cover a wide range — you often see people add every single item, as if opening a whole new course. Those of us with a clear sense of our own appetite just went for the cured herring roe and hokkigai clam, crunchy and addictive with every bite.
Every restaurant in the Sugita lineage opens its sushi with kohada — heavily cured, bold in flavor, with the shari lending the whole piece a gentle softness, and a clear, elongated umami in the finish.
The four pieces of white fish that day arguably captured another high point of the whole meal — the softness typical of white fish, with clever variations in preparation setting each piece apart.
The grouper carried a full flavor, its firmer chew drawing out more fish flavor. The sea bream had ample fat, eating with an extra edge of brightness and a clearer sweetness in the finish. The mackerel, after aging, had an almost melting texture, along with a delicate yet expressive smokiness. And the kasugo came with lemon, its soft texture carrying plenty of fish flavor.
Then came the kuruma shrimp, bafun uni, and anago that followed — these familiar veteran players of the sushi world showed a uniquely composed yet lively character in Sugita-san’s hands, as if given new life.
In how he expresses sushi, Sugita-san hides real power beneath elegance — pushing sushi’s sense of balance almost to its absolute limit, then closing each piece with a long, linear finish that leaves plenty of room for the imagination.
The meal ran a full four hours, and the experience at the counter was excellent throughout. Just watching Sugita-san shape sushi was enjoyable enough on its own — every motion elegant and fluid. Hmm, maybe carrying a bit of allure too.
There was plenty of humor in the conversation too — he’d casually needle every guest at the counter, always with just the right sense of restraint.
As we left, Sugita-san himself remarked that it had been a while since he’d done a four-hour lunch. From the guest’s perspective, it felt less like a meal and more like taking part in an immersive performance — visually, gastronomically, and emotionally engaged all at once, forming a truly one-of-a-kind sensory experience.
Japan’s number one — truly lived up to expectations.
✦ • ✦
Sushi Hashimoto
Tabelog Silver Award 🥈 grandir ginza east 1F, 1-8-2 Shintomi, Chuo City, Tokyo ¥36,300++
Hokkigai Broth, Rapeseed Blossom, Baby Ayu
Aoyagi, Scallop, Flounder
Softshell Turtle Chawanmushi, Mochi
The memory of Hashimoto can basically be summed up as: composed, restrained, complete, and generous in portion.
Hashimoto himself comes from a sushi family — after finishing high school, he apprenticed at Sugita for nine years, then went independent in 2014 to open Sushi Hashimoto, now in its 11th year. Kazuki Noguchi, the chef at Kotan seen in the group photo at the start, is also his disciple.
Compared to Sugita, whose counter is often filled with laughter, Hashimoto feels more like a gentle, quiet chef. He worked the fish seriously, shaping sushi with clean, brisk, fluid movements.
Tiger Pufferfish Milt, Shari, Egg Yolk Soy Sauce
Roe-Bearing Squid
Iwashi-maki
Monkfish, Oyster, Karasumi & Sweet Shrimp
Salt-Grilled Cutlassfish
In terms of culinary expression, Hashimoto leans more toward a sense of “solidity” — solid in portion, solid in bringing out an ingredient’s true flavor. You could tell from the otsumami alone: even coming from the Sugita lineage, Hashimoto-san has his own approach to cooking.
The meal opened with hokkigai and rapeseed blossom broth, its clear sense of season standing out. Sashimi came with an oversized scallop, plus aoyagi and flounder, sweetness maxed out. The softshell turtle chawanmushi had small pieces of mochi folded in, adding structure to the dorodoro (thick, gelatinous) texture Japanese diners tend to seek out.
The tiger pufferfish milt and roe-bearing squid that followed marked the handoff between two seasonal ingredients as the seasons turned — the former carrying plenty of charcoal aroma, breaking down solidly into the shari; the latter simmered in 70-degree water to a half-cooked state, its soft roe better expressing the ingredient’s freshness.
For the drinking snacks, every choice leaned soft in texture — the sweetness of the miso oyster hid a solid minerality underneath, while the karasumi-and-sweet-shrimp pairing combined both ingredients’ sweetness and texture, leaving a lovely milky note in the mouth.
Whether it was the sardine roll or the kohada, the two dishes we’d expected to be standout performers — one from the otsumami, one from the sushi — both fell a bit short at Hashimoto that day, slightly out of balance. The kohada was said to have shrimp floss underneath, but it was completely buried by the fish and shari.
But the white fish, tuna, and shellfish all had bright spots, perfectly rescuing our dropped expectations. The grouper’s chewiness drew out more fish flavor, while the mackerel, aged just like his master’s, filled the mouth with softness and smokiness. The tuna went chutoro-akami-otoro, showing off multiple facets of a single fish — softness, high acidity, sinew, and flavor. There was also a surprisingly herbal ark shell, and simmered clam pushing the sweet umami all the way up.
Overall, Hashimoto’s sushi stays firmly within a classic Edomae style. The shari doesn’t have Sugita’s clarity, but it clearly knows its role as a supporting player. Each piece has a more clearly defined character, yet none of it is showy — there’s a beauty in knowing when to hold back.
The chef doesn’t say much, but he’s clean and efficient in his work (and has a kind face), and with more hands on deck at the counter, the pace moves quickly — so over the course of the meal, eating while watching the flow felt genuinely comfortable.
Hashimoto’s sake selection is noticeably wider than Sugita’s, so evenings — especially the more relaxed second seating — tend to feel more comfortable.
✦ • ✦
Sushi Riku
1F ARISTO Hiroo Bldg, 5-13-6 Hiroo, Shibuya City, Tokyo ¥32,000++
Kohada Dashi
Perilla & Hosta Sprout
Amadai, Scallop
Sushi Riku opened last year, and probably because of Chinese capital behind it, it’s practically exploded in popularity on Xiaohongshu.
Riku Toda trained under Sugita-san for six years, then went to Thailand to open his own restaurant, Sushi Ichizu, which Opinionated About Dining rated Asia’s best Japanese restaurant, carrying the title of “best sushi in Asia outside Japan.” That résumé genuinely amplified expectations for this meal.
Unlike the buttoned-up look of his fellow disciples, Riku wears a “rebellious” black shirt, his service team dressed sharply in black suits, and the counter atmosphere feels more relaxed — a Donald Duck cup tucked away in the corner was quite the scene-stealer.
Iwashi-maki
Poached Kinmedai (Golden Eye Snapper)
Snow Crab
Monkfish Liver, Scallop, Karasumi
Crispy Fried Shark Fin
You could tell from the otsumami alone that Riku’s approach leans noticeably more toward fusion cooking, breaking from tradition in both technique and ingredients. That included some genuinely effective innovation, and also a few baffling missteps.
The signature crispy fried shark fin had a sort of terrifyingly brash aesthetic, but there’s no denying the crisp snap and springy chew, wrapped in that crackly crust, tasted incredibly fragrant.
But the poached kinmedai — the last time I ran into this strange preparation was at DV. A perfectly good fish, one that would be fat and fragrant with just a simple grilling — why soak it in broth until it turns into a lump of tough meat?
For the more traditional otsumami, the ingredients weren’t cheap, but the results after cooking were sharply polarized. The sashimi scallop was small but concentrated in sweetness. The shiso aroma in the iwashi-maki was lovely, exceptionally fresh. The snow crab, on the other hand, went completely off track — tough meat with large bits of shell. The karasumi and moon scallop, too, were entirely unmemorable.
The sushi section left an impression more through the flavor of the fish itself.
The kohada that traditionally opens Sugita-lineage meals had a short curing time, just crisp enough, giving a clean, brisk impression. The needlefish had beautiful fat content, and the kasugo carved out a highlight with its extreme tenderness.
As luck would have it, a fresh tuna had just come in that day, and Riku chose chutoro and akami — the fish’s flavor and just-right fattiness were genuinely satisfying. Flounder, kawahagi, tiger pufferfish milt, kuruma shrimp, and sea urchin all performed well too — one or two pieces in between might have fallen a bit short, but it didn’t hurt the overall meal.
Overall, the performance matched the price expectations. The counter atmosphere was relaxed, the style leaning modern and international, with clever use of plant-based aromatics.
Unlike his master’s elegance or Hashimoto’s restraint, Riku’s is a more direct expression of ingredient and texture — put simply, down-to-earth and bold in flavor.
As for the counter service, the suits felt a bit like surface-level polish. Aside from the sommelier who comes in two days a week for training, the rest of the service staff were, frankly, a bit of a mess. The young guy training in the kitchen, in from NOMA, was notable — and also managed to fumble the otsumami.
In the end, aside from the kohada and iwashi-maki, this place doesn’t really have much to do with Sugita anymore.
✦ • ✦
Sushi Yamato
Tabelog Bronze Award 🥉 1F Daigo Ginza West Tsukiji Bldg, 3-7-2 Tsukiji, Chuo City, Tokyo ¥24,200++
The last restaurant, Yamato, was actually visited half a year earlier. Price-wise, it’s also the most accessible of the three.
Yamato also comes from a sushi family, but unlike Sugita-san’s other disciples, he first trained at Ginza Kojyu before joining Sugita’s kitchen. Going by the timeline, he likely took over from Hashimoto-san as Sugita’s sous chef, and worked alongside Riku for around two years.
Worth noting: on Yamato’s noren curtain, you can see a mark tracing back to Nihonbashi Kakigaracho Sugita.
Barracuda, Kanpachi, Bonito, Nori Chawanmushi, Anago & Cucumber, Sake-Simmered Yariika, Kyo-yaki, Seared Bonito (no photo)
Yamato’s otsumami carries more of a personal touch.
The nori chawanmushi brought together sweetness, umami, and softness all as one.
Anago with cucumber was an incredibly memorable drinking snack — the anago grilled completely crisp and fragrant, the cucumber bringing a refreshing acidity, with a touch of dried fish adding extra depth.
Not quite a knockout of deliciousness, but the kind of small dishes that stick in your memory as “incredibly fragrant.”
Though we didn’t get iwashi-maki that day, the sushi still opened with the lineage’s signature kohada, and the small sardine nigiri performed beautifully — a slice of ginger adding a touch of sweetness to the sour-salty-umami mix.
Yamato’s sushi might not carry that innate spotlight-grabbing glamour, but overall fish quality never dropped off just because of the price difference. The shari was bold and grainy, its integration with some of the fish slightly weaker.
The counter that day was relaxed — Yamato-san doesn’t go out of his way to chat with guests, but he’ll always toss out a stray remark here and there, and the two-hour lunch was paced just right.
But I’ve also heard of people who caught him on an off day, hurried through the whole meal in an hour like being chased with a whip, and rushed to pay.
This is probably the best value among the Sugita lineage restaurants in Tokyo. If fate allows, I’d visit again — and hope Yamato-san is in a good mood that day.
The cooking at a counter is shaped by the shared atmosphere of everyone present that day, so a single hands-on experience at a sushi restaurant may not fully represent the level of the place. This account is also only built on my current understanding of sushi — which is why this piece chose a more “blow-by-blow” style of recording to share with you all. Maybe a year from now, revisiting these same restaurants would leave a completely different impression.
Thanks to a family member who managed to book Sugita and both disciples’ restaurants together, arranged across three consecutive days packed with memorable moments — personally, I think this comparison was well worth documenting.
That said, three days in a row was genuinely a bit of an occupational hazard. Gonna take a breather — but still ready for round two.
Among Tokyo’s restaurants, Sézanne carries real weight. #1 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024, #7 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025. Four years since opening, and two consecutive years holding three Michelin stars.
Chef Daniel Calvert’s résumé stands out too — he served as sous chef at Per Se while still young, led Belon to a Michelin star, and began his journey at Sézanne in 2021, earning a Michelin star in the restaurant’s very first year.
In short: a top-of-the-class graduate, and a straight-A student of French cuisine.
Sézanne sits inside the Four Seasons Hotel in Marunouchi — the equivalent of Beijing’s Westin Financial Street or Shanghai’s Mandarin Oriental Pudong. Looking out the window, you see neat, brightly lit office grids — elegance shot through with a faint sense of corporate grind.
Draw the sheer curtains, though, and it’s as if soundproofing kicks in — a different, elegant world entirely.
48-Month-Aged Comté Cheese Choux
Grain + Koshihikari Rice Sourdough
Hokkaido Scallop, Wasabi Leaf Oil, Horseradish
The opener after we sat down looked modest — a pair of cheese choux. Thin shell, molten center, a burst of aroma — bright and delicious, and it goes great with champagne.
The Hokkaido scallop came as a warm soup, looking pink and translucent, with an almost perfect tenderness. The creaminess wrapped around a sweet umami, with a touch of mustard expressed with real elegance.
Sanma, Caramelized Onion, Green Olive
In-season sanma (Pacific saury) made into a mini mille-feuille. Its silver skin delivers an impactful oceanic flavor, and the perfect fattiness speaks to exactly what’s good about this season. The onion’s sweetness balances the fish’s richness, while a touch of green olive paste adds savory saltiness and a fermented note.
In a single dish, it managed to showcase both the strength of Japan’s seasonal ingredients and a genuinely complex layering of flavor.
Monkfish Liver, Chinese Soy Sauce, Black Vinegar
Akkeshi Oyster, Yubari King Melon and Junsai
The monkfish liver was made into a tart, with soy sauce and black vinegar turned into a jelly on top. The texture was rich, but even with all that umami, a faint fishy note wasn’t fully masked.
Oyster paired with melon sounds like a cult combination on paper. The oyster meat was plump with a real minerality, while thin slices of melon lifted the sweetness and crunch — surprisingly delicious.
With all the cold starters served, the flavors leaned bold overall, but there were plenty of surprises within that range.
Crispy-Skin Kinki, Saffron
The hot courses opened with a nearly perfect piece of kinki (thornyhead rockfish).
The skin’s crispness was kept restrained, sitting atop flesh with a faint pink tint. The sauce was interesting without stealing the show — saffron sauce and clam juice mixed together, carrying a light spice note that also boosted the sense of freshness.
A small potato on the side was soft and delicious too.
Scottish Langoustine, Chanterelle Mushroom, Kagawa Green Pea
The langoustine that followed was just as likeable.
It lay languidly in the center of the plate; cut open, the center still had a faintly translucent tenderness. The sauce made from the shells was, unsurprisingly, an umami bomb, with a few sweet peas tossed in adding sweetness.
This is where I have to circle back and gripe about the bread served earlier — the grain-plus-Koshihikari concept sounds great, but the crust was so hard it was almost impossible to tear, wasting an entire plate of shrimp-shell sauce.
Tomato Tart, Basil, Burrata
The tomato tart is basically a classic on Sézanne’s summer menu.
The classic red-white-green combination of tomato, basil, and burrata is reconstructed here as a vegetable tart — a harmony that’s exactly as expected.
The cherry tomatoes carried a strong flavor — very sweet, but as each layer unfolded with its acidity, saltiness, and freshness, it actually ended up feeling palate-cleansing by the last bite. Burrata’s creaminess held up every layer of ingredients — balanced, delicious, and it tasted exactly like summer.
Yunnan Matsutake, Ginkgo Nut, Koshihikari Rice
A clear bag was cut open right at the table, and the aroma of umami immediately filled the whole table.
Once plated and set down, it turned into what looked like a creamy mushroom soup in front of us… or maybe rice porridge?
The matsutake was cooked to just the right crispness, still slightly juicy. The ginkgo nuts in the sauce were soft, their faint bitterness opening up another layer of flavor. If there’s one shortcoming, it’s that the Koshihikari rice was cooked so soft the grains had split apart, which left it feeling entirely like rice porridge in the end.
Roast Duck, Baby Leek, Cherry Red Wine Sauce
The main course landed on roast duck, paired with a chive-and-duck-leg soup.
The whole duck was air-dried, then charcoal-roasted — a method that resembles Peking duck to some degree, but it’s kept at a pink, medium-rare state.
Compared to the seafood courses before it, this main course was, frankly, just average — nothing memorable. The duck skin lacked fragrance, the meat felt dense, the sauce had no real presence, and the duck soup was rich to the point of being oily, which was a bit much all at once.
Aichi Fig, Coconut Granita
Fig Leaf, White Miso
At one point during the meal, a bottle was brought out and sabered open tableside — turns out Sézanne’s wine list does have some reasonably priced options, and a number of bottles come shipped directly from the estate, which is its own kind of guarantee for how well the wine has been kept.
In terms of service, Sézanne absolutely lives up to what most people picture when they think of a three-Michelin-star French restaurant. Whether it’s the wine service, how dishes are presented, or all the smaller details that happen at the table, everything was handled gracefully and thoughtfully.
Across the whole menu, most dishes are clearly built around Japanese ingredients as the main subject, but paired with plants and produce from around the world to complete the complexity and balance of each dish.
You can see a British chef trained in French cuisine, after working across several of the world’s major cities, forming his own point of view here in Japan about the ingredients this land has to offer.
Though most of the surprising dishes cluster in the first half of the meal, nothing here ever crosses into a genuine misstep that ruins the experience.
It’s a “Tokyo French” worth trying at least once. Come on an anniversary or some other special occasion, and the setting and service might just add a touch of romance to the day.
Hoping next time we get a decent piece of bread — one that doesn’t leave the friend who came with you texting at midnight after dinner, “I’m hungry again.”
Among restaurants in Tokyo, Nishi-Azabu’s Yamazaki is definitely on the wish list of anyone wanting to visit.
Chef Shiro Yamazaki opened his own restaurant at just 31 and won a Michelin star within three months of opening — he’s easily one of the most distinctive, eye-catching chefs among Tokyo’s current crop. He’s collaborated with a number of well-known restaurants, and this year’s four-hands dinner with Toudao in Shanghai was met with universal praise.
What makes Yamazaki impressive is how he fuses traditional cooking with a modern sensibility — keeping an ingredient’s essential character intact while layering in a new flavor or experience. Great ingredients plus purposeful innovation, on top of a relaxed hosting style and a counter that’s genuinely enjoyable to drink at — it’s hard not to openly like him.
栗の渋皮煮の唐揚げ
As soon as we sat down, we watched Yamazaki-san shaving bonito flakes. On the new menu that had just switched over for early autumn, a lightly thickened dashi was paired with fried shibukawa-ni — chestnuts simmered whole with their inner skin left on.
This is a well-known, classic autumn treat in Japan — chestnuts simmered in sugar with their brown inner skin left intact. But unlike the usual version, Yamazaki coats it in batter and deep-fries it once more, then finishes it with a scattering of crushed chestnut on top.
Lifting the lid released a fresh burst of chestnut aroma. The plump chestnut was sweet with a soft touch of bitterness, while the batter, soaked in the dashi, had drunk in all its savoriness, offering a textural contrast against the chestnut’s softness.
Fragrant and warming — a starter that wins you over instantly.
伊勢海老と菊の酢の物
Ise lobster is a menu mainstay, and on the autumn menu it’s paired with vinegar-pickled red chrysanthemum and chrysanthemum leaves.
The large lobster meat, cured in kombu, was firm and springy; the acidity amplified the lobster’s own sweetness, while a shrimp miso tucked between the flesh lifted the umami even further — a dish that’s straightforwardly satisfying yet full of detail.
Yamazaki-san recommended Kido’s Muryozan, and its clean, transparent character complemented the dish perfectly.
松茸のお粥
アコウと松茸のお椀
At the L-shaped counter, we watched Yamazaki-san carefully slice matsutake and an assortment of other mushrooms, then methodically stir-fry them in a small pot just behind the counter.
Matsutake was served two ways. First came a small bowl of zosui rice porridge to warm the stomach — fragrant, with the mushroom’s crunch and the plumpness of the rice grains both judged just right. Despite the generous handful of salt scattered in while stir-frying, letting salt carry the umami turned out to be a quietly convincing move.
The other preparation was a clear soup with grouper and sesame tofu. The large chunks of matsutake were genuinely satisfying to eat, with a crisp, crunchy bite. The sesame tofu, meanwhile, provided a sharp contrast with its heavy sesame aroma and soft texture.
The tableware shifted between lacquerware and porcelain, with the style of the dishes changing accordingly — small details that carried traditional aesthetics and etiquette.
甘鯛の松笠焼き パレルモソース
It wasn’t the season when tilefish carries the most fat, but the matsukasa-yaki technique with a light smoke brought out just the right delicacy in the fish itself.
Underneath was his own Palermo sauce — bell pepper, tomato, olive oil — with a vegetal aroma that grabs your attention, pairing well with the fish’s subtle richness.
太刀魚の揚げ物
Tachiuo (cutlassfish/beltfish) is a favorite for fried dishes in autumn kaiseki, and at Yamazaki it came through with both an airy lightness and real aroma. Frying didn’t make it heavier — instead it gave the fish a brief brightness on the palate.
Coming just before the red meat course, it bridged into autumn with richness, while its light crispness kept the rhythm of the meal balanced.
By this point the first bottle was running low, and on Yamazaki-san’s recommendation we picked the second wine of the evening — he opened it and checked its condition himself. He was essentially handling both the cooking and the wine service solo, yet managed it all without missing a beat.
Noticing the small sommelier badge pinned to his chef’s uniform — a chef who truly knows his own wine list is a huge plus when you’re drinking at the counter.
鳩の焼き物
Watching from a distance as Yamazaki-san set the pigeon on the grill, anticipation kicked in right away. For him, pigeon is a dish he’d said he’d never serve a guest unless it met his own standard of satisfaction.
It didn’t disappoint. Cooked to a rare-medium doneness, it showed a soft pink blush. Against the charcoal aroma, the pigeon’s own scent was pushed right up to the edge between gamey and bloody.
The black roasted pigeon-bone sauce and the white simmered pigeon-bone stock were an interesting pairing, but both were applied to the meat with restraint, used more to underline the pigeon’s own texture and aroma than to dominate it.
秋刀魚のご飯
にしんのお茶漬け
Yamazaki-san’s menu doesn’t look like it has that many courses, but every portion is substantial. For the rice course, he even prepared two versions — kamameshi and ochazuke.
One was straightforward satisfaction — sanma (Pacific saury) grilled until its fat rendered dark and fragrant, set against the fresh green scent of herbs. The other was sweet-cured, air-dried herring, its settled aroma unfurling in the tea broth — after a few rounds of drinking, a comforting way to land the meal.
ジャスミンのアイスとクロイチジク
The final dessert was a knockout too — a ’99 Salon Champagne was used to make the sauce, and its aroma exploded across the entire counter.
The Earl Grey ice cream itself held its own too — beyond the intensely silky texture and beautiful tea aroma, a layer of meringue hidden at the bottom of the bowl added a light touch of sweetness. And that’s not all — toward the end, a splash of Gaja’s grappa was poured over the ice cream, dialing back the perceived sweetness.
A dessert that looks almost recklessly generous with its ingredients, yet is expressed with delicacy and completeness.
Whether it’s the food or the atmosphere at the counter, Yamazaki hits exactly the aesthetic I love. In Yamazaki-san’s hands, every dish comes across as multidimensional, detailed, complete, and crisp.
You can see the traditional craftsmanship and aesthetic sense, and you can also see the extra dimensions that come from folding in modern, cross-cultural elements. Some techniques hit you with real visual and aromatic force, yet every small detail is still nailed once it lands on the plate.
I finally understood what people mean by the legendary phrase “Yamazaki’s food has real contour.”
Friends who like to drink will have a more relaxed experience booking the second, 8:30pm seating. The way Yamazaki handles every bottle without missing a beat is also a major part of what makes the counter experience so comfortable.
Yamazaki
Nishi-Azabu UOU Building 1F, 1-15-3 Nishi-Azabu, Minato City, Tokyo
Tuesday – Saturday
5:30 PM -11:00 PM
https://yamazaki0823.com/j/
Chef’s Menu JPY 44,000++
I love it — don’t miss out on a single season to come.
I think most people share my reluctance to pay premium prices for Chinese food in Tokyo. But when Minami-Aoyama’s Sansan opened, curiosity got the better of me.
A new Tokyo outpost of Shanghai’s Toudao, plus a disciple of chef Tan Shiye — that’s already eye-catching enough. But what actually won me over was a young chef from Shaanxi who’s seriously digging into Cantonese cuisine.
(On chef Tan’s Longting tasting counter)
His menu has showy shark fin and red crab spring rolls, quick-fried seafood that tests real skill, and hand-pulled biángbiáng noodles made to order — it has blood and bone to it, and at some point it stirs up real respect for Chinese culinary craftsmen.
First impressions: this is a great spot to bring Japanese or other international friends, a counter that carries the true spirit of Chinese cooking.
Hokkaido conch x Nagoya jidori chicken — a lively start
Char siu
I happened to catch Sansan’s first day on the new autumn menu — only one cold dish before moving straight into roasted meats.
A lively opener made with Hokkaido conch and Nagoya jidori chicken, topped with fried crispy taro strips and myoga. Solid but unremarkable — an opener that doesn’t leave a strong memory.
The char siu’s flavor has clearly been adjusted — the marinade is out, replaced with papaya and other fruits as the main source of flavor during curing. Notably sweet, closer to the Japanese palate people would expect. The thin translucent strip of fat tucked in the middle had a pleasant crispness.
I wanted a drink with the meal, but Sansan’s wine list is still fairly simple, and there’s no one on the floor you can talk to for sommelier recommendations. In the end I picked a safe bet off the little wine card.
For wine lovers, next time it might be worth considering paying a corkage fee and bringing your own bottle.
During the meal, chef Ahao showed everyone the ingredients needed for that day’s dishes — two large red crabs and shark fin, minced fresh on the spot in preparation for the fried spring rolls.
Quick-fried hokkyokugai clam
Scallop in oyster sauce
The eight-second quick-fry — at chef Tan’s Longting counter it’s geoduck, but at Sansan it’s been swapped for Japanese hokkyokugai (Arctic surf clam).
The plated-per-person format strips away a bit of wok hei, but surprisingly, Japanese ingredients turn out to have their own edge under Chinese cooking techniques. Coated in oil, the clam showed off a juicy crispness, sweetness, and umami.
The scallop that followed held its own just as well — I remember chef Tan’s version being deep-fried with oyster sauce, while under Ahao’s hand the technique shifted to pan-searing, paired with the classic Shunde egg-white scrambled milk.
A crisp, sweet bite meeting soft, milky richness — a perfect example of Japanese local ingredients meeting Cantonese-style bites.
Gastrodia and giant grouper soup
Giant grouper with mizuna
A 16-jin (about 8kg) giant grouper, split into two parts.
The head went into a gastrodia (tianma) and grouper soup — most of the aroma hit the moment the lid came off, but the taste itself lacked the depth you’d hope for in a Cantonese-style soup.
The body was lightly pan-fried, glazed, and paired with mizuna — the fish was plump and tender, carried a fragrance from the light frying, and the skin had a faint gelatinous texture, balanced by a crisp stalk of mizuna. A genuinely good dish, where quality ingredients met precise cooking.
Steamed chives and green pepper
I never expected to be shocked by a vegetable dish tucked in among all the showy ingredients.
Green pepper, chives, peanut oil, plus a touch of the restaurant’s own soy sauce.
The green pepper brought a fresh, green vegetal note and a juicy crunch, the chives carried a distinctive, individual aroma, and peanut oil with soy sauce rounded out the flavor from every angle. Amid all the rich meat and seafood, this plate of crisp greens practically bounced onto the table with its own energy.
Clean, fresh, crisp — and every bit as fragrant as anything else on the table.
Ise lobster stir-fried with sansho and onion
Stir-fried kisu (Japanese whiting) with chili
Grape granita
When pushed onto the international stage, Sichuan and Cantonese cuisine always seem to get bundled together like two poles of a magnet, showing off the range of Chinese flavor profiles. In this menu at Sansan, you also see Japanese ingredients expressing themselves somewhere in between, crossing cuisines.
The sansho-and-onion Ise lobster and chili-fried kisu hit you with aroma the moment they land on the counter. But the flavors didn’t quite align — under the plated-per-person format, the temperature and taste of the counter dishes by the time they reached the mouth fell a bit short of expectations.
Shark fin and red crab spring rolls
Wagyu sweet and sour pork
As the meal moved into its second half, the freshly assembled spring rolls finally arrived at the table.
Like little golden pillows — cut open, they’re packed full of filling. Crisp outside, tender inside, the straightforward satisfaction of a great spring roll. Watching a dish that tests real technique get made and plated live in front of you always earns a little extra anticipation and appreciation.
But the wagyu sweet and sour pork made by Mayu stumbled a bit — it’s fragrant on the first bite, but by the second or third the fat rendering out of the beef becomes overwhelming. Layering that much high-fat meat with a rich sweet-and-sour sauce felt too saturated for a counter setting, missing a bit of nuance.
Seafood and daikon soup
Biángbiáng noodles
Olive-kernel fried rice with egg
Even though chef Ahao trained as chef Tan’s disciple with a Cantonese background, this menu doesn’t stick strictly to Cantonese cuisine throughout.
For the starch course, freshly proofed noodles were set out at the counter.
Hands moving, noodles slapping down on the board with a sharp crack, clean, fast, full of energy — like a rhythmic sparring match. It brought a real sense of Shaanxi street life to this counter.
Grandma cake and iced tofu pudding
As a restaurant that’s just opened, it might not yet match the impact of the Longting tasting counter, but you can already feel the focus and seriousness of a genuine Chinese chef at this counter.
The fusion of Japanese ingredients and Chinese technique brings out the strengths of both, and the kind of hands-on, feel-and-timing craftsmanship usually hidden in the kitchen gets brought right in front of the guests, making the skill itself part of the experience.
By the end of the meal, you’ll easily find yourself putting this on your “Top 1 Chinese restaurant to bring Japanese friends to next time” list. It’s a moment of a Chinese chef standing at a counter in Tokyo, showing the world the appeal of Chinese cuisine.
That said, choosing the counter format means the restaurant is committing to deliver a complete dining experience for guests, not just a table of dishes. Right now, some hot dishes fall short on temperature, the wine list is limited, and the interaction at the counter doesn’t feel fully realized. Compared to Tokyo’s more established restaurants, these shortcomings stand out more within the overall experience.
Looking forward to watching it climb, step by step, toward the peak of “Tokyo counter-style dining.”
Minami-Aoyama Sansan
Honma Building 4F, 7-14-6 Minami-Aoyama, Minato City, Tokyo
If there’s one restaurant in Tokyo that’s notoriously hard to book but absolutely worth chasing, acá 1° tops that list.
Spanish cuisine that moved from Kyoto — since opening in 2013, it has held a Tabelog Gold Award for seven years running (barring closures and other exceptions) 👈 in Japan, that carries more weight than a Michelin star.
With fewer than ten seats at the counter, it’s been a brutally hard reservation from the moment people started noticing it.
In an interview, acá 1°’s chef, Tetsuo Higashi, once said he wants to make food people love using simple ingredients and a direct approach to cooking.
“Be the kind of straightforward guy who blows people away.” I think that translation holds up well enough here.
Sawara (Spanish mackerel)
The first thing that hit me was just how small acá 1° is.
Small enough that the counter runs on four people total. The sommelier and manager handle the guests while the head chef and sous chef work the charcoal fire, prepping the day’s dishes.
Lightly seared sawara, clean fat with real depth, smoke and tenderness both perfectly judged. Tucked into a cluster of greens was a hint of sansho leaf — a small but standout note.
Not the kind of flashy opener that makes you gasp on sight, but one that grows on you, quietly delicious in retrospect.
Signature konoshiro with fried bread
Tomato bread paired with silver-skinned fish always brings to mind the sardines or anchovies common in Spanish tapas.
But here they skip the Spanish habit of oil-cured tinned fish, using fresh, lightly cured konoshiro with just a touch of olive oil instead. The fish stays whole, beautiful, firm.
The bread is fried but keeps a slightly soft bite, which lets it meld better with the fish. The tomato’s natural acidity and umami pair perfectly with the cured konoshiro — that’s the moment I understood Tokiwa’s tomato shari.
Shiso and herbs bookend it inside and out — umami, acidity, and a faint green freshness woven together, layered and beautiful.
Sanma risotto
“Please squeeze out as much juice as you can. 🍋”
This year is famously a bumper year for sanma (Pacific saury), and at acá 1° that shows up as sanma risotto. Two ingredients both rich in their own fat, layered together — surprisingly, they meld rather than compete.
The fish oil’s aroma builds with every chew beneath the rice’s surface. The lemon juice you can’t see is truly the soul that pulls the whole dish together.
Fried ayu wrapped in a soy crepe
The next course is fried ayu (sweetfish) rolled in a soy crepe — a roe-bearing ayu tucked satisfyingly inside its own belly. The lightly sweet sauce turns out to be rich when you think back on it: sherry and sake lees bring a complex acidity, fermented depth, caramel, and nutty notes.
Wrapped around the outside like a scarf are sansho leaves and scallion whites, and the crepe itself carries a faint bean fragrance. The first bite might remind you of Peking duck, but it’s elevated in both satisfaction and complexity.
Kuruma shrimp and shark fin
I didn’t expect the most stunning shark fin I’d have all year to come from a Spanish restaurant in Japan. Look closely and there’s a lot of thinking packed into that small pot.
Shark fin and kuruma shrimp are both prized, representative ingredients in China and Japan respectively, while garlic-and-olive-oil shrimp is a beloved dish across Spain. Here they drop the garlic, keeping all the sweetness of the shrimp heads and shells locked into the oil, then lightly coat the shark fin with that fragrance.
Texturally, it holds a very precise line between the crisp snap of the kuruma shrimp and the springy tenderness of the shark fin. A small piece of bread is left at the end, just right for soaking up the last of the shrimp oil.
A pot of premium ingredients brought together with no sense of excess — pure, and delicious.
Iberico ham and matsutake broth
Ham broth paired with finely julienned, large matsutake — it’s yanduxian, the classic Shanghainese ham-and-bamboo-shoot soup, reimagined in another register. Salty, sweet, savory, crisp, without a trace of excess seasoning — every bit of the aroma comes purely from the ingredients themselves.
Whether it’s the previous course’s kuruma shrimp and shark fin or the matsutake julienne that follows, both are dishes whose texture is extremely sensitive to temperature.
But at the acá 1° counter, all of that is clearly already anticipated with precision. Even sitting in a bubbling pot of oil, right up to the moment it reaches your mouth, every ingredient stays exactly at its most perfect state.
Kobe beef — sirloin with roasted peppers | tenderloin with black pepper paste
The main course is wagyu; at the start of the meal, guests are asked to choose their own portion. Some couldn’t finish 30g, while the heartiest eater at the table went as high as 90g.
The color of the meat alone tells you how beautiful the tenderness is; the seasoning and sides differ slightly between the two cuts, and even the knives used are distinguished accordingly — beyond what you taste, the other four senses keep getting quietly activated by small details the restaurant has designed in.
A glass of sherry was added along the way, and the female sommelier’s confident pour was genuinely impressive. A great restaurant doesn’t just take care of its guests — it also lets them randomly trigger the staff’s hidden skills over the course of the meal.
Hairy crab Spanish-style seafood rice
The final dish, hairy crab paella, has been acá 1°’s unchanging signature since its Kyoto days.
Take a first bite as is, then squeeze lemon, add garlic sauce, and the shrimp oil saved specially from the shark fin course. One pot of rice, four layered ways to taste it, all left for the guest to explore.
A rich, showy, playful, high-impact staple. My favorite moment is right after a generous spoon of shrimp oil goes in — the freshness turns gorgeous, and the acidity from the garlic sauce and lemon threads through every grain. A little sinful, maybe, but as the saying goes—
“Well, you’re already here.”
Pear
Goat cheese and black fig
For dessert, a seasonal pear arrives first to cleanse the palate. At the counter, the chef unhurriedly starts brewing tea and pour-over coffee himself, occasionally stepping over to flip the figs on the charcoal fire and give them a sear.
As a guest at this counter, you genuinely feel attended to in every single moment.
Goat cheese ice cream and black fig — both ingredients with a strong, distinctive aroma of their own, yet somehow what comes through in this dish is a clean, powerful restraint.
It brings out the goat cheese’s rich milkiness, along with the concentrated sweetness of figs in season, while the caramel draped over the top adds a crisp touch of bitterness — perfect.
There’s no question the experience at acá 1° leaves a deep impression. I wouldn’t even want to evaluate it on something as simple as “how good the food tastes.”
At this counter, it’s not just about watching the chef perform solo — it feels more like being invited by every staff member at the counter into their world, a fully immersive show. Get into the exchange and you’ll find every performer at the counter is a versatile all-rounder capable of surprising you.
As for the food itself, it’s simple but never simplistic. Using Spanish cooking’s seemingly straightforward approach, the chef draws out a different side of Japanese ingredients.
The restaurant’s command over its output can only be described as frightening. Heat loss or gain caused by serving vessels is the excuse countless restaurants use to explain away “an off day,” but at acá 1°’s counter, the food arrives with an almost calculated precision.
Complete, balanced, elegant, comfortable, satisfying… I think even someone with the weakest vocabulary would find a string of compliments spilling out after this meal. From start to finish, every second of emotion at this table was carefully accounted for.
A rightfully deserved number one in Japan for Western cuisine / Spanish cuisine / non-traditional Japanese dining (yes, you read that right — it’s number one across all three).
アカ (aca 1°)
2-1-1 Muromachi, Chuo City, Tokyo, Mitsui Building No. 2
Across countless past trips to Tokyo, from a pure transit-convenience standpoint, Gotanda Station has always been my first choice.
Sitting right on the Yamanote Line, with the Asakusa Line and Ikegami Line alongside it, it’s incredibly convenient for sightseeing and shopping. Just 8 minutes to Shibuya, 15 to Shinjuku, 20 to Tokyo Station.
The hotels nearby span a wide range of budgets, and all have been renovated within roughly the past decade. My go-to, the JR Gotanda Hotel, is even built directly into the train station — on a stormy, rain-lashed day you can head out and catch the train without ever opening an umbrella.
There’s a Uniqlo right in the station, a drugstore within a three-minute walk, and a Don Quijote within five. The everyday convenience is exceptional.
More importantly, draw a circle centered on Gotanda Station, and within 300 meters there are 552 restaurants, 400 of which serve lunch.
And of the top 20, 14 are Tabelog “Hyakumeiten” (Top 100) picks; the top 50 all score above 3.5 on Tabelog. Plus, one more thing — most don’t require reservations, you can just walk in, and quite a few stay open late into the night.
Pretty great, right?
There are already plenty of Tokyo shopping and transit guides online. This piece is about good restaurant options near Gotanda Station — nine spots in total, all within a five-minute walk of the station. Nearly all of them can be booked same-day or walked into directly.
P.S. Some of these spots have their own Instagram (findable directly through Tabelog), so you can also book or confirm hours through Instagram.
Even though the baseline quality of restaurants in Japan tends to run high across the board, bookmarking these nine will mean you never have to stress over what to eat during your Tokyo trip.
A godly curry shop around Gotanda, it’s held a spot in the area’s top five for years running. The two signature curries are: one, a beef tendon curry pot simmered over 6+ hours with 🧅caramelized onion, tendon and 🥕vegetables; the other, a chicken curry pot made with 14 spices plus 🧈butter and 🍅tomato.
Their curry doesn’t come plated together with rice — it’s served in a small stone pot, still practically bubbling. You spoon it out yourself, gradually, mixing it into the rice on the long plate, and by the last bite it’s still hot. Outside of ramen shops, this kind of experience is genuinely rare among Tokyo’s quick eats.
The curry’s spice level goes up to five stages, so pick according to your taste — though personally, I think the original flavor is already fragrant enough, and you don’t necessarily need to sign up for Japan’s “chili-powder-style” assault.
Beyond the signature flavors, the restaurant also rolls out limited options now and then — tomato curry, miso-corner egg curry, and the like. Even repeat visits stay fresh.
A reassuring, comfortable little spot, great for solo dining. Before 11:30am, and between 2-5pm, it’s also ideal for passersby who need a quick meal. Takeout is available too, still hot by the time you get back to your hotel.
The undisputed No. 1 noodle spot around Gotanda, tucked right under the bridge by the Yamanote Line exit. Open from 7am to 3am daily — whether you’ve just woken up and want a fragrant, warm bowl to kick off the day before setting out, or you’re stumbling out of an izakaya at night craving something hot and comforting, it’s the best option in the area either way.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that everyone working there right now is a foreigner — the shop genuinely uses Kagawa Prefecture flour, makes fresh noodles daily, keeps a light dashi broth, and fries all its tempura to order.
There’s always a line out front, but the stand-and-eat format turns tables over fast. The ordering machine out front supports multiple languages, and there are plenty of ways to add extras or upsize — friendly to both foreign visitors and big appetites.
The cold udon has real bounce, the broth clean and refreshing. Order it warm and you get something hot, the noodles soft with a springy core. I love the tempura half-soaked in the broth — carrying the crisp of fried food while soaking up the dashi’s umami.
It’s hard to find a place like this elsewhere — impersonal in service, and yet so full of lived-in warmth and satisfaction.
Booking around Gotanda really doesn’t take much effort — not even for a Tabelog Yakiniku Hyakumeiten pick in both 2024 and 2025. You can generally still land a table after 8pm same-day, and there’s an English menu too.
They don’t make a big deal about the meat’s origin — it’s basically sourced from Shibaura Market. Right from the raw-tossed beef heart, with its full-on bloody tang and crunch, your eyes light up; the tossed beef tripe eats full and rich too — the ingredients are genuinely top-grade and fresh.
The overall value is extremely high — the “Wagyu Moriawase” with five cuts is just ¥2,500, and the equally five-cut offal platter “Horumon Moriawase” is only ¥1,900. And the quality stands in stark contrast to that price.
Both the meat and the offal are marinated exactly right — no excess seasoning, just the confidence of the raw ingredient itself. The marbling on the meat is evenly, beautifully distributed; lay it on the charcoal and it goes “sizzle,” charred outside, tender within, plenty flavorful even without dipping sauce. Or go bolder — wrap it around steaming white rice for one bite, and your happiness shoots straight up. Even beef liver, which usually risks a metallic tang, here gets just a light oil-and-salt marinade, and comes out surprisingly tender and fragrant.
Recommended: Wagyu / Horumon Moriawase + rice
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🔥Ushigoro Kan Gotanda
3.55 👨🍳 A yakiniku chain that never disappoints ｜ 🥢 Tablecheck
💰 JPY 5500+ ｜ 🌙
📍 東京都品川区西五反田1-17-1 第二東栄ビル 2F
Ushigoro is a well-known yakiniku brand in Japan, renowned for using domestic A5 Kuroge Wagyu. Ushigoro S. and Ushigoro Kan are its upscale lines.
Compared to a more neighborhood-style spot like Charcoal Yakiniku Horumon Maruha, this place has a few clear advantages: works well for larger groups, works well for families (bringing along elders or kids), and has more options on the drinks list. Beyond that, obviously, it’s easier to book and has a nicer setting.
The set menu options are flexible — from the ¥4,500 “Kan Course” up to the ¥10,000+ “Kiwami Course,” covering a range of budgets. The cooking styles span raw beef, grilled, shabu-shabu and more.
If you couldn’t lock in a specific yakiniku place you had your heart set on that day, Ushigoro will always be more reliable than just picking a random similar-type yakiniku restaurant. (Hard-earned lesson from getting burned before 🤷)
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🍝Kobayashi Shokudo
3.52 👨🍳 Hidden gem blending Japanese + Italian + French ｜ 🍴 Tablecheck
💰 JPY 2500+ ｜ ☀️🌙
📍 東京都品川区東五反田5-21-6 池田山コープ 1F
This place isn’t tucked into the bustling area right around the station — it’s hidden away in a small side street along the Yamanote Line. It counts as one of the more concealed restaurants nearby, with a “great recluse hiding in the city” kind of ease, relaxed without losing refinement.
Chef Daisuke Kobayashi doesn’t have a flashy background, but ever since opening in ’08 he’s held onto his own distinct sense for Japanese ingredients × Italian & French cooking. Fresh fish becomes carpaccio, dried fish goes into simmered pasta, and regionally distinctive ingredients like Kome eggplant and Iwanaka pork also make their way into the food.
Because Japanese ingredients are folded in, the cooking here isn’t a straight copy of native Italian style.
For instance, a carpaccio made with Kagoshima mackerel and vegetables gets folded together with a kelp-yuzu jelly. Pasta simmered with sanma (mackerel pike) gets Awajishima mushrooms added in to deepen its umami complexity.
And the closing tiramisu, built around matcha, swaps mascarpone for white chocolate to add richness, with a hojicha granita adding extra points to the overall tea aroma.
Recommended: The set menu is more than enough!
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🇮🇹VIGO
3.51 👨🍳 A godly little bar, drink-friendly ｜ 🍴 Tabelog
💰 JPY 7,700+ ｜ 🌙
📍 東京都品川区西五反田1-4-8 秀和五反田駅前レジデンス 2F
VIGO leans into the feel of an Italian trattoria-bar — the moment you walk in, there’s a sense of shrugging off the day’s fatigue for a drink. You can go with the set menu, and if ordering à la carte, the restaurant will proactively split dishes into two portions.
The dishes are refined in presentation, with plenty of traces of Japanese ingredients merged into traditional Italian cooking — the thinking behind it is delicate. Sea bream carpaccio, for instance, comes paired with fennel bulb here, layered with a touch of fruit and a smoky note; the olive oil used inside is excellent quality, though the restaurant never mentions it — just quietly lets it lift the dish’s aroma.
The pasta carries some rebellion too — beyond sansho leaf in the vongole pasta and wind-dried fish roe paired with thin noodles, you’ll even find a dan dan noodle option on the menu. The recipes are unusual, but they taste great, always making you want to try something new next time. The menu isn’t cheap, but the ingredients and portions hold up. And the wine list is genuinely comfortable and affordable, with some niche, interesting, delicious Italian bottles to choose from — no pressure even sitting alone at the bar with a glass.
One personal detail that got me — on my first visit, I hesitated over whether to add a salad for more vegetables, worried about being impolite by leaving food. The chef didn’t say much, just quietly upped the vegetable portion in our carpaccio. There’s a real thoughtfulness woven through the hospitality here, hard to believe it’s the experience of a small bar.
Recommended: The course is great! No missteps so far ordering à la carte either (though you can ask for the pasta to go easier on the salt)
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🍝Radicare
3.46 👨🍳 A pasta joint full of life ｜ 🍴 Tabelog
💰 JPY 1500/8000+ ｜ ☀️🌙
📍 東京都品川区西五反田1-20-2
A genuinely delightful neighborhood pasta spot. Most of the diners are locals from the area, and the lunch set starts at just ¥1,500. The whole place carries a homey feel — even the garlic frying in the kitchen has that lived-in warmth.
The chef preps bread and salad, slices fish and deveins shrimp, tosses pans for pasta at other tables, and pulls out a strand to taste the doneness right before plating — all of it flows together with an easy looseness. The cooking looks wild, but from the details of prep, like freshly sliced ham and fresh prawns, all the way to the balance of the seasoning, everything is handled beautifully.
I really loved their lemon mozzarella pasta — the portion piles up into a little mountain on the plate. The first bite has al dente bite and beautiful acidity. Thin scattered lotus root slices are soft yet fresh, fitting right in without feeling out of place. The mozzarella scattered on top slowly melts into the pasta, growing more fragrant the more you eat.
If you want a drink alongside, the wine service is solid, with a decent selection. In the moment the older gentleman pours your glass, there’s a flash of elegance and care that briefly steps outside this homey little spot.
Recommended: Lunch offers excellent value
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🍶Kuwahara Shoten
3.43 👨🍳 Standing-only izakaya and sake shop ｜ 🥂 No reservation needed
💰 JPY 2000+ ｜ ☀️🌙
📍東京都品川区西五反田2丁目29番地2号
Counts as an extremely welcoming sake shop for tourists and sake beginners alike.
The shop sells over 200 sake labels by the bottle, more than 40 of which are also poured by the glass in the evening, with the lineup refreshed daily. For friends who have no idea what they even like, there’s even a 30ml tasting pour available.
Drinking on-site is standing-only, with simple snacks to choose from — it’s more about giving people space to chat and try new things. If you’re lucky, you might even run into a brewery’s own kuramoto here in person, telling the story and craft behind their sake.
Worth bookmarking — stop by for a glass when you’re passing through, you might just make a new discovery~
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🍶Atsumori
3.21 👨🍳 Not just for drinking — you can pet the dog too ｜ 🍶 Book via Instagram
💰 JPY 3,000+ ｜ 🌙
📍 東京都品川区西五反田1-30-6 モリカワビル B1
My personal No. 1 bar around Gotanda. The owner is a soccer-loving guy from Kagoshima, holed up in the shop every day with his dog, Bu-chan.
Plenty of by-the-glass sake options, including well-known labels like Juyondai and Aramasa, all reasonably priced and rotating often.
Most importantly, the shochu stock here outclasses 99% of bars in Tokyo — every kind of imo-jochu, kuri-jochu, mugi-jochu, even a pre-diluted “maewari” Houzan. The owner may seem laid-back, but he’s genuinely skilled at handling shochu’s temperature and dilution ratio — the kind of place that lets you actually catch shochu’s finer points.
Worth noting: the place carries cigarette smoke (smoking doesn’t seem to be banned), and there’s not much food, though outside food is allowed.
Who knows, maybe we’ll run into each other here someday~
Every Japanese chef has a Tokyo dream, and every Tokyo chef has an America dream. Plenty put down roots in the city they dreamed of; plenty quietly retreat back to their hometown a year or two later.
「水づき」counts as a success story — once the No. 1 spot in Gifu Prefecture, it opened in Tokyo’s new-money enclave, and by now bookings already need to be made more than a month in advance.
Owner and head chef Junji Mizuki has no apprenticeship background at a famous yakitori restaurant, but his store back home in Gifu Prefecture won wide acclaim over its 12 years — even making the Michelin list and becoming a hard-to-book local favorite. At the end of 2024, Mizuki-san, already past fifty, opened a place in Tokyo.
A silver-haired guy who looks laid-back on the surface, and yet he made it all the way to Tokyo on his own strength. His yakitori has a style entirely his own — bold, leaning on charcoal aroma to carry the saltiness, while always keeping a touch of raw freshness at the core. Genuinely a man of ideas and grit.
Omidori chicken, breast, thigh
Softshell turtle and matsutake chicken soup
Right on time, I sat down to find Mizuki-san had already got the charcoal going, ready to start grilling.
Both cuts were Omidori chicken. The thigh still had a touch of pink, the salt on the outside applied boldly, firm and springy to bite into. The breast piece had a bit of crispy skin still attached, its smoky note distinct.
An opening with plenty of chicken aroma and real texture, instantly lighting up a sense of exhilaration in the mouth.
Fried chicken breast cutlet + blue cheese
Two surprises: first, that the fried cutlet used the breast, a naturally firm cut; second, that it was paired with something as bold as blue cheese.
A very light, crisp shell plus chicken breast cooked just to done. The chicken’s own fiber structure hadn’t been broken down — it simply showed off its springy, tender side here. The cutlet was fried so lightly that chopsticks alone could pull it apart.
The blue cheese was as pungently characterful as ever, but its creamy texture stood in clear contrast against both the crisp shell and the breast meat.
A precise expression of the ingredient’s state — a deliciousness that can’t be replicated.
Chicken white liver
Chicken meatball skewer
Akami (breast/thigh)
The white liver carried a grassy fragrance. The chicken meatball was firm, full of meaty aroma, tender to bite. The akami was crisp outside, tender inside, its chicken flavor unmistakable under a generous coat of salt.
From the very first skewer, Mizuki-san’s style came through clearly. Steady, precise, decisive hands — a textbook case of charred-outside, tender-inside balance with a bold hand.
Every skewer’s exterior was wrapped in charcoal aroma, yet the core still carried a faint touch of underdone freshness. The salt hand was heavy, but the chicken flavor it drew out was exactly right.
Shoulder
Bone-in thigh
Maitake mushroom
Big cuts of meat on the grill always stand out. A few pieces dripping with fat kept getting shuttled between near and far heat, flipped again and again by Mizuki-san — and kept not making it to the table.
The large bone-in thigh, moved between near and far heat, essentially got charcoal-grilled first, then smoked. The spread-out skin expressed both a burst of aromatic fat and a nearly crisp char. The meat pulled off the bone still carried a hint of blood, extremely tender. The chicken’s texture, its fat aroma, and the charcoal note were all beautifully expressed.
The maitake, surprisingly, leaned quite sweet — a clever way of drawing out the flavor of the mountains.
Ginkgo nuts
Chicken skin
Tofu
Chicken tail
Chicken skin and chicken tail are the two skewers with the highest fat content, but on Mizuki-san’s menu they showed off more of their crispness and spring instead.
The chicken skin, glazed heavily and lightly charred, had crisp fat; the heavily-salted chicken tail here combined a crackling texture with fat that melted the instant it hit the mouth.
Even the tofu wasn’t an afterthought — lightly seared over the charcoal, then tossed with minced meat, myoga, fresh scallion and shiso — a small, fragrant, soft happiness with a hint of charcoal.
Ebi-imo taro
Esophagus (chicken neck skin)
Neck meat (seseri)
You could see how beautifully Mizuki-san shifted between near and far heat — his handling of every single cut so practiced it looked like pure muscle memory.
The chicken chosen already had beautiful fat on its own, with the fragrance of a genuinely quality bird. The skin was always kept at just the right lightly-charred state, while the meat had that ultra-tender, half-done texture. Smoke was another crucial layer — Mizuki-san’s yakitori carries a smokiness draped over the chicken like a thin veil.
You might grumble that it’s heavy-handed with flavor, but skewer after skewer, it fills you with happiness all the same.
Gifu soba
Softshell turtle and matsutake zosui
Chicken curry
Mizuki-san’s menu already has two staples prepared. One of them is soba from his home prefecture of Gifu.
The noodles are made firm and silky-smooth. The first bite, tossed with wasabi and salt, fills the mouth with buckwheat fragrance. Then, soaked in broth and rolled together with plenty of fresh scallion, there’s fragrance on top of freshness, and the noodles’ slippery softness combined with a faint whole-grain chew feels genuinely pure.
For an additional staple, I chose the curry — a Southeast Asian-style chicken curry, with generous rice underpinning a diverse array of spices. Heavy-handed, but fragrant.
Overall, I really liked Mizuki-san’s cooking — bold yet meticulous. There’s boldness in how ingredients are handled, and every small detail is taken care of.
Sitting at this counter to eat feels especially full of life. During the grilling, you keep seeing smoke rise as chicken fat drips onto the charcoal, and sometimes bright flames flare up. And though the restaurant is heavy-handed with salt, the generous amounts sprinkled on always come out just the right kind of salty-savory — because the salt used has been pre-treated to reduce its sodium content.
While writing this piece, I also dug up some past interviews with Mizuki-san. Turns out that even though the restaurant has only been open 11 months, his approach to cooking chicken has been continuously refined toward an ever-higher level.
The additional-order list always runs to twenty-some options, and Mizuki-san handles the cooking time and intended flavor of every single cut with near-effortless ease — the kind of understanding that only comes from years of accumulated experience.
The kind of place that makes you think, ‘eating yakitori is such a rush.’ The overall sense of satisfaction is sky-high, and the impact comes at you from multiple directions.
Strongly recommend coming extra hungry. And for those who drink — strongly recommend skipping wine or sake entirely and going straight for a highball.
I’ve been posting a lot of quick photo-notes lately, wanting to record dining experiences in the fastest, most concise way. But 「わたなべ」 still deserved a proper, full write-up.
Unlike a lot of the restaurants I’ve written about before, this one isn’t actually hard to book, and isn’t even really a famous spot — at most, it’s a 🥉 Tabelog Bronze.
The chef comes from a family in the food business, but stepped outside the family’s wagashi-making tradition, teaching himself through travel and part-time work. After going through several rounds of trial by fire, he opened this current 「わたなべ」 in Shirokane-Takanawa.
The dining experience here is comfortable and satisfying, with little highlights popping up throughout the meal. Those memorable moments, each carrying his personal style, keep stacking up — to the point that halfway through the meal, you’re already looking forward to the next visit.
Freshly-shaved bonito and kombu broth
Hachijojima Tokyo lemon vessel, steamed cod milt, lily bulb
Sitting down, I watched chef Watanabe start shaving bonito flakes right there. With only one seating a night, the whole meal unfolds unhurried.
I visited on Christmas, and of course a kaiseki restaurant isn’t going to have a special holiday menu. But the Christmas Day release of Aramasa No. 6 was an absolute must. And naturally, the first bottle opened was a lightly sparkling, freshly-fizzy Aramasa — standard practice here.
Worth noting — Watanabe’s résumé includes four years working front-of-house in a sake-focused establishment, so the restaurant’s sake sense is excellent, and quite a few progressive, rare bottles can get pulled out from behind the counter.
The cod roe arrives in a lemon vessel, a nose full of ultra-fresh citrus scent. The milt brings richness, the lily bulb softness, and squeezing a bit of lemon juice from the lid in gives a bright, beautiful acidity.
Kobako crab plus snow crab is basically the standard winter combo at kaiseki restaurants. It tests both the chef’s crab-picking skill and how each chef brings their own style to it.
Here, the chef pairs it with a sieved salmon roe sauce — delicate, rich, a serious bonus point. The umami practically floats out of the bowl; the crab meat, roe, and coral layer on top of each other, the sauce coating rice with real texture, so every bite feels a little different while still delivering intense umami impact. Satisfying.
Amadai
The benchmark for amadai in a bowl.
In the fresh, warm broth, the fish holds a delicate firmness. The sweetness pulls inward, that fine, lingering “sweet” that clings to the mouth — genuinely lovely.
Pairing it with Juyondai Aiyama — flawless.
Chutoro, madai, bigfin reef squid
The squid was exquisite — currently using squid from Aomori Prefecture, its stickiness bold in the mouth without ever being reckless. Citrus brings a touch of freshness, and the sweetness that lands on the tongue leaves you wanting more.
“Try the uncut piece.”
A small piece got tossed my way — all I can say is, the ingredients here are genuinely excellent.
Fried Osaka ebi-imo, kuruma shrimp sauce
Freshly-drawn sake
Ridiculously good ebi-imo….!
The fried ebi-imo has a lightly crisp shell outside, silky and delicate inside — already captivating on its own. The kuruma shrimp sauce underneath is the real key, instantly lifting both aroma and umami.
Aroma, sweetness, umami unfold layer by layer in the mouth, and hiding deep inside is even a faint hint of cherry tomato.
I genuinely wanted a piece of mantou to wipe the plate clean.
Echizen crab
Shino Yamadanishiki
The Echizen crab course was fresh, beautiful, and the preparation could almost be summed up in one word: “pure.”
The crab legs got only simple treatment, the sweetness direct; the crab roe stayed in the shell, lightly grilled — the moment the aroma comes out, turning it into a crab-miso is pure happiness. The umami is restrained, not the kind that bursts open all at once, but a layered sense that keeps pushing further back.
Jinhua pork, ginkgo, hoba-yaki
Egg white, oyster, steamed daikon
The pork is soft and juicy, carrying that sinfully alluring lard aroma, the cooking time and fat both dialed in just right. The vegetable miso brings a bit of acidity, cutting through the richness of the fat while letting the hoba leaf’s own aroma slowly rise up.
The overall feel is a bit like a “white-braised pork belly” — less of the heavy soy-sauce darkness, more of a clean, comfortable layer of aroma and sweetness.
The egg white, oyster and daikon that followed made for an interesting pairing too. Mild in flavor, soft in texture, backed by freshness and a faint smokiness. It breaks from convention without ever breaking kaiseki’s sense of elegance.
Buri and daikon mixed rice
Makurazaki bonito flakes, egg mixed rice
The buri-daikon mixed rice as the main course, a whole pot for two, rich with charcoal aroma and fat, yet the finish is surprisingly clean.
Just as I was about to ask for another bowl, I was told the rest would be packed up as a takeaway gift, because the chef had prepared three more different staples for everyone to choose from… Makurazaki bonito flakes with raw egg, whitebait karasumi mixed rice, chicken and spinach curry. Three completely different styles — meaning there’s always one flavor to satisfy a serious rice-eater.
While guests were still absorbed in choosing their staple, the chef had already started on dessert — unhurriedly making liquid-nitrogen walnut ice cream on the spot, along with freshly roasted tea leaves.
Soft, delicate — walnut’s aroma, caramel’s sweetness, a milk-tea-toned flavor layered together, very restrained, yet you just can’t stop taking one bite after another. Loved it.
Chef Watanabe’s cooking style genuinely breaks the combinations kaiseki takes for granted, yet holds onto that elegance firmly with a restrained approach.
None of the beauty here is loud or outward-facing — it quietly explodes inside instead. Sitting at this counter, bringing food to your mouth, is a happiness that rises up little by little from deep within.
Before actually visiting, people always seem to place an odd amount of trust in restaurants that show up on rankings and lists.
So when I discovered that Central — once No. 1 on the World’s 50 Best, now “graduated” into Best of the Best and no longer part of the main ranking — actually had a location in Tokyo, I couldn’t help but get eager to try it. Even though this list is one I’ve been burned by before: service, atmosphere, food, each with its own way of disappointing. But people always forget the pain once the scar heals.
Let me put the conclusion up front: MAZ is interesting and worth trying, and I’d strongly recommend going for the pairing.
It reads more like an overseas laboratory for Central and Mater: built on the idea of “Afuera hay más” (there’s more outside), transplanting Peru’s vertical ecology and field system into Tokyo’s tense, dense, minute-by-minute rhythm.
You can see it’s kept the recognizability of its tableware and produce, and insists every dish carries a “narrative thread,” while still leaving diners plenty of room to participate — centered on experience, temporarily building a space at the table that speaks to Central, Lima, Peru, even all of South America.
The keyword running through the menu’s narrative is: vertical ecology. Altitude slices the land into different climate and produce zones, and the menu lets you see Peru’s different elevations, terroirs and cultures juxtaposed and contrasted all at once.
But if you’ve already been to South America — please, don’t hold it to Central or Mil’s standard. MAZ is really still standing on a Tokyo table, telling guests Peru’s story; there’s always a sense of a table that’s been “relocated.” The cultural original is preserved, while some ingredients have been swapped out due to logistics and transport conditions.
Put simply, it’s a bit like Shake Shack opening in China — the menu stays the same, but the ingredients always end up getting swapped.
The opening is actually quite “Japanese.” The winter menu uses the three crabs most popular on Tokyo fine-dining tables right now — snow crab, hairy crab, and kobako crab — in a welcome-snack combination.
The snow crab is shaped like a spring roll, but softer on the palate than expected. The wrapper has a slight chew, gently holding the crab meat inside. On top sits a jelly-like layer, clean and savory.
Hairy crab and white shrimp are wrapped together inside a black cuttlefish tart. Visually mysterious, but it eats with clear, crisp, decisive freshness — and mid-chew, a sudden burst of something like the damp green plant-life of a shoreline pulls your mind from “seafood” toward “ecology.”
The kobako crab, meanwhile, comes with three kinds of radish — first a beautiful acidity, clean and fresh, a faint onion sharpness layered with the crab meat’s softness, and yet the aftertaste is deeply savory.
The Sauvignon Blanc poured alongside at that point was beautifully matched too, quietly stretching and straightening out the freshness, keeping all three crab courses clear and bright from start to finish.
The second course jumps the coordinates straight to the “high valley streams” at 1,250 masl. The lead role shifts to seasonal vegetables and small river catch.
You pull the cutlery out of a slipper-shaped stone vessel, stir the vegetable strips into the shrimp broth, with a “lobster mountain” set alongside — the overall visual is refined.
The moment it arrives you can smell the rich shellfish aroma, the shrimp-roe broth thick enough, carrying a savory viscosity that clings to every bite. And unexpectedly, a chewy little potato ball turns up hiding inside the crayfish balls.
On the other side, the real star of “lobster mountain” turns out to be the tiny crab perched on top with a flower on it — here it becomes a fragrant, crisp little palate cleanser. The floral scent flashes by, then the small crab’s oceanic flavor closes it out gently, drawing a beautiful contrast between “rich” and “light” within the dish.
Hokkaido scallop ceviche. The sauce clearly reproduces the fruity freshness and acidity so representative of this iconic Peruvian dish.
But it tasted a bit too “primitive” — just a very standard, very ordinary ceviche flavor. Aside from the plating making it look more complex, more like a piece that “needs explaining,” it felt a little like turning something simply delicious into something unnecessarily complicated.
The scallop-roe crisp on the side was more endearing, though — fresh, crunchy, growing more fragrant the more you chew, the kind of supporting player that doesn’t steal the scene but quietly earns extra points.
Never expected this would turn out to be a dish that stacks “funky on top of funky”; even less expected that this funk would actually get you hooked — delicious, likeable, and even now, thinking back on it, I still crave it a little.
The plate carries an oily, fermented funk, while the pocket bread is stuffed with long-aged cheese, hitting you with a more direct, more animal funk head-on. The two funks layer together, and yet it’s exactly right, giving the whole dish more depth.
The flatbread is really just a vehicle for everything else, but its thickness, softness, and slight chew are so well controlled that it can bear the weight of both funky aromas in the mouth without ever stealing their spotlight.
The wine pairing was clever too — a Pinot Noir from southern Chile with a firm structure, clear acidity and a leaning-dry frame. Here it actually reins in the funky aroma in the mouth cleanly, as if slicing through the fat of the fermentation and the cheese.
Salmon roe paired with matsutake — in theory, two “freshness bombs” colliding head-on, which should have been thrilling. But this bowl, honestly, was just too salty.
But the pairing was still interesting. What came out was a wine from Peru’s own Pisco Valley, not sold anywhere else in Japan. The wine itself leans very dry, with heavy nutty aromas. But paired with this dish, it actually got rounded out in the mouth, and even that faint, barely noticeable sweetness got drawn out.
The black-green course that followed turned out completely different from how it looked — octopus leg and charcoal-grilled shirako — and it, too, lacked anything memorable.
A whole lily bulb arrives at the table, and the chef peels it apart petal by petal right in front of the guest. It was matured in snow for two months first, then cooked using a traditional Peruvian potato-roasting method.
The lily itself is soft to the point of nearly melting, its sweetness extremely clean and restrained — you like it more with every bite, as if winter’s cold and a plant’s sugars had been compressed together into a single mouthful. Alongside is a chili sauce with a hint of mint, yet with a trace of smoke at the tail end, lifting the clean sweetness into a deeper layer.
It was good enough to almost make you forget the actual main course: platinum pork. It follows the same “soft” path, the meat’s aroma rich and deep, the fibers so fine they look combed apart.
The pairing, as always, was a top-tier performance. An Argentine wine from Uco Valley, decanted to just the right point when it arrived. Rich in herbs and spice, with soft tannins and a faint sweetness, it clung perfectly to both the lily’s clean sweetness and the sauce’s smoky mint note.
from the non-alcoholic pairing
A whole yuzu arrives at the table just like that: the peel kept in its complete shape, a small bowl wedged into a cut in it. A pre-dessert growing right inside the fruit.
First on the palate is yuzu’s signature acidity and faint bitterness, then the elusive sweetness beneath. Sansho pepper powder makes a wonderful companion, bringing a bright, fresh aroma and a tingling numbness.
Worth adding here: the restaurant’s non-alcoholic pairing is beautifully done too, both in visual appeal and in the tableside smoking experience — clearly thought through with real care. For guests who can’t drink, the “tableside beverage” experience is fully rounded out too.
The meal closes with the main dessert landing on one of Peru’s most important products — cacao.
Four different kinds of cacao are used all at once, broken out into five small desserts. Eating them stacked together is, honestly, a bit much — but the concept is genuinely interesting.
Because growing cacao is hard work, yet often only the beans get used while everything else is discarded, the restaurant chose to bring the cacao’s pulp, juice, and even the husk into this dessert course. The sweetness, meanwhile, is expressed by borrowing juice from yacón.
By the end of the meal, I walked out with an armful of cards.
Thinking back, there weren’t many pure taste memories from this meal, but the experience of MAZ still felt special within Tokyo. The way things were presented, the choices in the pairing, the understanding of local culture, ecology, produce and aesthetics that seeped through — all of it stays memorable, all of it distinctly its own.
It’s fundamentally an overseas offshoot of Central, so it’s hard to really compare it to the on-the-ground experience and ingredients you’d get in Peru itself.
How to put it — if you visit, definitely get the pairing.
And — arrive ten minutes before your reservation time; the restaurant’s location is hard to find on the map.
