I have been travelling to Japan for more than 20 years, and no matter how many times I return, Tokyo remains one of the most exciting cities in the world to eat.
Over the years, I have eaten at hundreds of restaurants, sat at countless sushi counters, followed chefs as they moved from one restaurant to another and returned to favourite places again and again. Some restaurants I first visited years ago have become almost impossible to book. Others remain wonderfully accessible. And every time I return, there is something new to discover.
For a long time, I wanted to bring all of this knowledge together in one place. The result is The Ultimate Tokyo Dining Guide, a personal selection of more than 90 restaurants and places I believe are genuinely worth knowing.
It stretches from some of Tokyo’s most sought-after sushi counters and highly specialised Japanese restaurants to neighbourhood favourites, ramen, soba, tonkatsu and casual places where you can simply walk in. Because eating well in Tokyo, for me, has never been only about securing the hardest reservation.
And that is also why I wanted this guide to be practical.
Tokyo has an extraordinary restaurant culture, but planning where to eat can be confusing, particularly for someone visiting from abroad. Knowing the name of a restaurant is often not enough. You need to know whether it can be booked online, whether you need a hotel concierge, when reservations open and, sometimes, whether trying to secure a table is realistic at all.
Each restaurant in the guide therefore comes with practical booking information and one of four booking difficulty levels: Easy, Possible, Difficult or Very Difficult. Restaurants can also be sorted by cuisine, price and booking difficulty, making it possible to build a Tokyo itinerary around the way you actually want to eat.
The guide also includes my detailed advice on navigating restaurant reservations in Japan, something I have learned through many years of travelling there.
Most importantly, this isn’t intended as a definitive ranking of Tokyo restaurants. It is a very personal edit.
Some addresses are internationally known. Others are places I simply love and return to. There are expensive dinners and inexpensive lunches, old institutions and newer discoveries. What connects them is that I believe each deserves a place in the guide.
Tokyo changes constantly, and the guide will too. I will continue adding restaurants as I discover them, revisiting existing recommendations and updating important information. What launched with more than 80 addresses has already grown to more than 90.
After more than two decades of eating in Japan, it feels good to finally have all these places, notes and years of experience gathered in one place.
I hope the guide makes planning Tokyo a little easier, but more importantly, I hope it leads to some memorable meals.
The Ultimate Tokyo Dining Guide is now available on the Luxeat Guide, with three months’ access for £79.
With warmth,
Aiste
