Tokyo is thrilling with countless restaurants, cafes, and simple, cheap street food, creating a perfect combination between traditional Japanese cuisine and influences from China and the West.
Whether you want to be full from an inexpensive ramen dish or end the day at a three-Michelin-star restaurant, you will easily find what you are looking for in Tokyo.
Suppose you live in a country of islands by the ocean, with steep mountains, narrow valleys, and little farmland.
You will likely raise a small livestock farm, grow some vegetables, and enrich your menu with fish and seafood.
Adding rice from a neighboring country that settled well in the fertile river valleys gives the base for Japanese cuisine.
Japanese cuisine is one of the most famous in the world and has held a central place in global cuisine for decades, especially sushi, which in its classic version rolls rice, raw fish, and vegetables inside seaweed.
Sushi is a traditional typical Japanese dish that combines what the land gives with what the sea provides.
These combinations of land and culture are also found in ramen and many other dishes, but on top of all this, local cuisine absorbs Western influences. Until the 19th century, the main influences came from China, including rice, ginger, soy sauce, the use of chopsticks and the meticulous approach to food.
Starting from the Meiji era and the opening to the West, Western influences, especially American, entered Japanese cuisine.
By the late 19th century, only a few decades after the arrival of the admiral’s fleet that opened Japan’s gates, cafes began appearing in Tokyo. They were unsuccessful imitations of Western cafes, serving poor-quality coffee, but they attracted many young Japanese who dressed in Western style, used English words in speech, and preferred them over traditional tea houses.
This was a battlefield between the originally Chinese tea houses and Western cafes.
Today, the Japanese balance between East and West, tradition and innovation, produces surprising results.
Tokyo cafes are of the highest standard, as are the restaurants and bakeries, and Tokyo has the largest number of Michelin-starred restaurants in the world, more than New York and even Paris.
This happens when Western influences are applied with Japanese precision by those raised on Zen teachings.
High quality meals are available already in the morning.
A traditional Tokyo breakfast is white rice with miso soup or steamed vegetables with a dried sour plum. For those seeking challenges, try Nattō, fermented beans with a strong sour taste, served with rice and cabbage. Traditional Japanese breakfast is gradually giving way to Western-style breakfasts outside the home, which are more common in the city streets.
Hotels mainly offer Western-style dishes, and outside them, it is easy to find cafes serving coffee with croissants, sandwiches, or French toast, bakeries offering high-quality pastries, and places serving pancakes.
Pancakes are usually thick and airy, served in original combinations alongside familiar traditional flavors.
There are also savory combinations for fans of the genre.
From breakfast to dinner, the day usually involves wandering the city without always stopping for a proper meal.
There is no need, as Tokyo excels in a wide selection of interesting and fresh street food.
Vendors are polite, prices are reasonable, and quality is good. The main obstacle is language, as many Japanese do not speak English well or at all.
East and West meet in Taiyaki, a fish-shaped pastry traditionally filled with sweet bean paste, with newer variations including cheese.
The Japanese also favor sweet-filled pastries, such as Dorayaki, a flat cake or pancake filled with sweet beans.
Melonpan, also called Melon bread, is a melon-shaped pastry traditionally sweetened with melon flavor.
It can be served alone or with fillings from meat to cream.
A more traditional snack is Mochi, sticky rice fried with a sweet taste, typically for New Year but served year-round.
Savory street food includes croquettes filled with cheese, onion, beef, and other ingredients,
Nikuman dumplings filled with pork, similar to Chinese jiaozi, and Takoyaki, fried balls filled with octopus, ginger, and green onion.
Again, the sea appears on the plate.
For multiple-course meals without going to a restaurant, one can buy Bento boxes from convenience stores and supermarkets.
Bento includes rice, a bit of meat or fish, vegetables, sauces, and a small sweet dessert.
Bento sushi is also available, presented neatly in a tray with a transparent lid, ready to eat. It is recommended for train trips.
For proper meals, options are endless.
Sushi is considered a Japanese ambassador abroad, but in Tokyo, its prominence is not as high, and many restaurants do not serve it.
Prices range widely from inexpensive meals to several hundred dollars. Some restaurants have three Michelin stars.
Beyond sushi and Western restaurants, from burger stands to French chef restaurants,
Tokyo’s base dish is ramen: noodles in broth with vegetables, pork, or seafood, sometimes hard-boiled egg, sometimes Naruto, a slice of fish roll. It always has surprises and innovations, is filling, tasty, and often very inexpensive. Ramen restaurants, including Michelin-starred ones, are available.
Other Japanese dishes include Gyukatsu, deep-fried beef strips served with soup, cabbage, rice, and sauces like Worcestershire, curry, or wasabi. Tonkatsu is a pork version. Udon are wide noodles served in broth or with tempura shrimp, spicy curry, and more.
Two dishes considered elite in Japanese cuisine are Sukiyaki and Shabu-shabu. Both are social meals where diners cook ingredients in a boiling broth, dipping thinly sliced meat, vegetables, mushrooms, eggs, and sauces. Some tables include fish, tofu, and other surprises. It is an interactive meal similar to fondue, often accompanied by alcohol and laughter.
Tokyo’s cuisine includes dishes from across Japan and Western-influenced meals. One can find the ocean, rivers, Chinese influence, and Western influence on a plate, reflecting Japanese culture: nature, agriculture, and history.
The day often ends with a drink. Traditionally, Japanese drink sake, clear rice wine, sometimes made from potatoes or sugarcane, served at room temperature or warm. Drinking sake together is a ceremony of friendship and connection.
Alongside sake, beer, soft drinks, and highball whiskey sodas are popular. Toasting locations include Shinjuku Golden Gai, a nightlife district with hundreds of pubs and bars, and Piss Alley, more traditional but lively with music and smells of grilled meat.
