Tasting Tokyo

A very edited list of restaurants, bars and bakeries — and a love letter to 7-11.

If it’s your first time in Tokyo this spring, congratulations! And, um, I hope you booked your meals a few months ago.

Tokyo dining is overwhelming: So many incredible choices. So few available reservations! If you don’t have an excellent concierge (one justification for booking a fancier hotel) or a local friend willing to help get you in, try your chances through Tableall and Omakase. As much as I love to schedule ahead, Tokyo sometimes forces me to be (ugh) spontaneous. So as I walk around, I look into restaurants to see if they’re filled with happy people (lines in the age of TikTok can be misleading, but they can still be excellent indicators). I grab onigiri from 7-11. And I know I can almost always find something good in a train station. Not every meal has to be perfect.

I have a list of almost 200 restaurants recommended by incredible people, but trying to choose can be overwhelming. (I put them all on a Google map so at least I know what’s nearby when roaming and hangry.) So here is the handful of places that I can really recommend. I was hoping to update this list next month, but had to cancel my trip. Please let me know what you find on your visit!

SUSHI

Kimura/The delightful, wildly talented Kimura-san is one of the leaders when it comes to bringing back (or, shall we say, preserving) this almost-forgotten style of sushi, in which fish is dry-aged, like a great steak, to create something with richer, deeper flavor and silkier texture. All eight customers are enraptured as they watch him select the fish from handmade wooden aging boxes and slice it like rare jewels. Eating here is an honor (and a rent payment), and getting a table often requires the recommendation of a regular. Setagaya City is a schlep. If you can swing it, get the 5:30 reservation so you can do a little ceramics shopping at the wonderful Kohoro.