Tokyo Food Guide: Best Dishes, Neighbourhoods and Where to Eat

Ticket machines (shokkenki) sit by the door of most ramen, soba, curry and gyudon shops. Put in cash (newer machines take IC cards or QR payments), press the button for your dish (the top-left button is usually the house special), add toppings, and hand the tickets to the cook. At counters, sit where you are shown, and at popular spots join the queue outside rather than waiting by the door. Water and tea are free, the wet towel is for your hands, and calling “sumimasen” to get attention is normal.

Izakaya (Japanese pubs) usually add an otoshi, a small appetiser and seat charge of 300 to 800 yen per person. Ordering is increasingly by tablet or a QR code at your table, often in English. Menus must show tax-inclusive prices; takeaway is taxed at 8 percent and eating in at 10 percent. There is no tipping anywhere, and leaving cash on the table will get you chased down the street. Most places now take cards and IC cards, but small yokocho stalls and old shops may be cash only. Indoor smoking is banned in most Tokyo restaurants, though some tiny bars and kissaten still allow it.

Finding and booking: Tabelog is Japan’s main review site, with scores that run low: 3.5 is very good, above 4.0 is exceptional. Google Maps works well too. Casual places do not take bookings. For sushi omakase, kaiseki and anything with a Michelin star, book weeks ahead through TableCheck, Omakase or your hotel concierge; expect a card guarantee and a cancellation fee of up to 100 percent for no-shows.

Conveyor-belt sushi (kaiten) is the cheapest way in: chains such as Sushiro, Kura and Hama Sushi charge from about 120 yen a plate, with ordering by touch screen; Uobei in Shibuya sends plates by express lane. A filling meal is 1,500 to 3,000 yen. Standing sushi bars such as Uogashi Nihon-ichi, with branches around Shibuya and Shinjuku, serve nigiri piece by piece from a chef for 100 to 500 yen each. Lunch sets at proper counters are Tokyo’s best value: the same chef, fish and rice as dinner for 2,000 to 6,000 yen, with no booking needed at many Ginza and Tsukiji counters if you arrive at opening.

Mid-range omakase dinners cost 10,000 to 25,000 yen for 12 to 18 pieces plus small dishes; book a week or two ahead. High-end counters in Ginza and Roppongi charge 30,000 to 60,000 yen or more and book out months ahead, often only through a hotel concierge or a booking service; Sukiyabashi Jiro, the most famous, no longer takes ordinary public reservations. Etiquette: eat each piece in one bite, dip nigiri fish-side down if you dip at all, do not mix wasabi into the soy, and eat with your fingers if you like. Do not wear perfume to a sushi counter.

The wholesale market left Tsukiji for Toyosu in 2018, but Tsukiji Outer Market stayed: around 400 shops and stalls in the blocks between Tsukiji Station (Hibiya Line) and Tsukijishijo (Oedo Line), selling sushi breakfasts, grilled scallops and oysters, tamagoyaki, tuna bowls and knives. Stalls open from about 5am to 6am and most close by 2pm; come by 8am to beat the tour groups, and check the calendar, because many shops close on Sundays, public holidays and some Wednesdays. Eat at the stall or in the marked areas, not walking.

Toyosu Market, on the Yurikamome at Shijo-mae in Koto, is the working wholesale market. The tuna auction runs from about 5:30am to 6:30am; anyone can watch from the upper-floor windows without booking, while the lower observation deck is allocated by an online lottery that opens the month before. The market’s restaurant blocks hold the sushi counters that moved from Tsukiji, including Sushi Dai and Daiwa Sushi, where queues from before dawn are normal. Next door, Toyosu Senkyaku Banrai, opened in 2024, adds an Edo-style food street and hot-spring baths with bay views. Toyosu shares the wholesale market’s closing days, so check before you go.

• Shinjuku: Omoide Yokocho by the west exit is a smoky lane of tiny yakitori and offal stalls, a few seats each; some charge a seat fee, so check before sitting. Golden Gai is for drinks, not dinner. Tsunahachi has served tempura here since the 1920s, and the basement of Isetan is the city’s best depachika.
• Ebisu and Nakameguro: Ebisu Yokocho, a covered arcade of izakaya counters 3 minutes from Ebisu Station, is livelier and more mixed than Omoide; Afuri’s yuzu-salt ramen started in Ebisu, and Tonki in Meguro is a classic tonkatsu counter.
• Ginza and Yurakucho: sushi and kaiseki at the top, yakitori and beer under the railway arches at Yurakucho at the bottom, and Ginza Kagari’s creamy chicken ramen in between, a few streets from the Kabuki-za.
• Tsukishima: Monja Street, a short walk from Tsukishima Station (Oedo and Yurakucho lines), has dozens of monjayaki and okonomiyaki restaurants where you cook at your own hotplate; staff will show you how.
• Ryogoku: the sumo district across the river in Sumida, by the Kokugikan arena. Chanko restaurants, several run by retired wrestlers such as Tomoegata, serve the hotpot all year.
• Asakusa and Ueno: Asakusa, around Senso-ji, has tempura rice bowls, sukiyaki at Asakusa Imahan, melonpan from Kagetsudo, and Hoppy Street’s outdoor stew-and-beer tables. In Ueno, Ameyoko market sells seafood bowls, kebabs and fruit on sticks, and the alleys under the tracks are cheap izakaya until late.
• Shimokitazawa and Jimbocho: Shimokitazawa is the capital of Tokyo’s spice and soup curry, with a curry festival every autumn; Jimbocho, the bookshop district, has old European-style curry houses such as Bondy.
• Kanda: Edo-style soba at Kanda Matsuya and Kanda Yabu Soba, in buildings that look the part.

Department-store basements (depachika) are the best food shows in Tokyo: dozens of counters selling bento, sushi, tonkatsu sandwiches, tempura, salads, wagashi sweets and luxury fruit. The big ones are Isetan Shinjuku, Mitsukoshi in Ginza and Nihonbashi, Takashimaya Nihonbashi, Daimaru at Tokyo Station and the basement of Ginza Six. Bento cost 1,000 to 2,500 yen, and many counters discount 20 to 50 percent in the last hour or two before the 8pm close. There is rarely seating, so take it to a park such as Hibiya Park or Ueno Park.

Konbini (7-Eleven, FamilyMart and Lawson) are open 24 hours and genuinely good: onigiri rice balls for 150 to 250 yen, egg sandwiches, hot fried chicken, oden in winter, and bento they will microwave for you. The cheapest hot meals are the chains: gyudon at Yoshinoya, Matsuya and Sukiya for 500 to 900 yen, tendon at Tenya, udon at Hanamaru, and curry at CoCo Ichibanya. Standing soba counters in stations sell a bowl for 400 to 600 yen.

Kissaten are Tokyo’s old coffee houses, with dark wood, hand-drip coffee for 600 to 1,000 yen, thick toast, pudding and egg sandwiches. Café de l’Ambre in Ginza has roasted its own beans since 1948, and Saboru in Jimbocho is a cave of plants and wood with Napolitan spaghetti. Third-wave cafés cluster in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, Shibuya and Nakameguro.

For drinks, draft Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo or Suntory costs 500 to 800 yen in an izakaya; highballs and lemon sours (shochu with lemon and soda) are the cheap everyday drinks. Hoppy, a low-alcohol beer-like mixer topped up with shochu, is the old-Tokyo order in Asakusa and Ameyoko. Many izakaya offer nomihodai, all-you-can-drink for 90 or 120 minutes at 1,500 to 3,000 yen. Sake bars and craft-beer taprooms are spread across the city. Tea is free with meals; matcha sweets are everywhere. The drinking age is 20.

Vegetarians need to look harder than the menu suggests: dashi, made with bonito fish, is in miso soup, most noodle broths and many sauces, and “no meat” often means fish is fine. Use dedicated places: Ain Soph. Journey in Shinjuku, T’s TanTan’s vegan ramen inside Tokyo Station, Saido in Jiyugaoka, and shojin ryori (Buddhist temple cuisine) at Daigo near Tokyo Tower. Indian restaurants and conveyor-belt sushi (cucumber, natto, egg, inari) are easy fallbacks.

Halal food is easiest around the Tokyo Mosque (Tokyo Camii) near Yoyogi-Uehara and in Asakusa near the Asakusa Mosque, where Naritaya serves halal ramen; Halal Gourmet Japan and similar apps list certified restaurants. Pork and pork extract are common in ramen broth, gyoza and curry roux, and mirin and sake are used in many sauces.

For allergies, packaged food in Japan must label eight major allergens (shrimp, crab, walnut, wheat, buckwheat, egg, milk and peanut), but restaurants have no such duty. Carry a written card in Japanese, and be careful with soba (buckwheat) shops, which often use the same water for all noodles.

Food tours in the yokocho of Shinjuku, Ebisu and Ueno, or Tsukiji in the morning, cost about 10,000 to 20,000 yen with food and drinks included; Arigato Japan and Magical Trip are two established operators. Cooking classes teach sushi, ramen and home cooking in half a day. See Japan food for regional dishes beyond Tokyo.

Tokyo travel guide