Open for: All day
Price range: $$
For a rejuvenating start to the day indulge with a Japanese breakfast at Yakumo Saryo. Designed by architect Shinichiro Ogata, the teahouse is a tranquil space offering a morning of peace and mindfulness. The asacha (morning tea) set breakfast includes a variety of teas, porridge, fish, pickles, miso soup, and wagashi (confections) to finish. 
Know before you go: Reservations are required.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $
Just minutes from Shinjuku Station, L’ambre, which opened in 1950, allows customers to step back in time to an old-school kissaten. The cafe sports a high ceiling, red velvet seats, and classical music, providing the perfect atmosphere for enjoying coffee drinks, pizza toast, tuna and egg sandos, and a selection of cakes. Retro menu items include coffee jelly topped with ice cream and whipped cream, as well as a bright-green melon soda float.
Best for: A casual throwback lunch.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$
There’s no shortage of soba specialists in Tokyo, but few manage to create noodles quite as flavorful and satisfying as those at Tamawarai. Each batch is made from scratch — the dough mixed, rolled, and cut by hand — and much of it with buckwheat the restaurant helps to grow. The side dishes, such as soba miso and the wonderfully creamy yuba (soy milk skin), are prepared with equal care. 
Know before you go: Tamawarai doesn’t accept reservations, so expect to stand in line for up to an hour.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $
Manma, an onigiri (rice ball) shop, sits in the shadow of the Shinjuku Isetan department store. Onigiri are a classic comfort food, but Manma’s draw is its unique fillings: Popular options include a “mother and child” of grilled salmon with sujiko salmon roe, seasoned ground meat with cured egg yolk, and bacon with cream cheese. The only side dishes — all that’s really needed — are miso soup and tsukemono, pickles. The casual seating is at the counter, so everyone has front-row seats to watch the staff assemble giant rice balls. 
Know before you go: You’ll have to wait for a seat, but you can also grab a to-go order and take it to the nearby Shinjuku Gyoen park.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$
Chef Yuki Motokura left a traditional Japanese kitchen to open Pizza Marumo. Motokura defines his pies as neither Neapolitan nor Roman, but as Tokyo-style. The charred pizza dough has the texture of freshly grilled mochi rice cakes, a comfort food for many Japanese diners. The extensive menu includes wagyu carpaccio, oven-roasted vegetables, and a long list of pizzas. The restaurant covers classic pizzas, as well as unique Japanese-style renditions incorporating umami-rich ingredients like katsuobushi (smoked skipjack tuna flakes), shaved kombu (kelp), shiitake mushrooms, or almost cheesy, soy-marinated tofu.
Know before you go: Marumo is popular, so be sure to book a reservation via the restaurant’s website.

Open for: Dinner
Price range: $$$
Grillmaster Takashi Imai’s namesake yakitoriya is large, sleek, and contemporary. All the seats look in on his spacious open kitchen, so you can watch him in action over the main charcoal pit. Besides his excellent chicken skewers, Imai usually offers a list of premium meats, such as French pigeon, and a serious selection of grilled vegetables from his second grill.
Know before you go: There’s also a substantial list of natural wine to pair with your skewers.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$
Butagumi, serving tonkatsu (breaded deep-fried pork), is set in a romantic 60-year-old, two-story, freestanding traditional house. Here, you dine on premium cutlets — made from your choice of a couple dozen regional heirloom breeds from around Japan — cooked a beautiful golden-brown and served with a pyramid of finely slivered cabbage and thick, house-made Worcestershire-style sauce.
Know before you go: Butagumi has a second shop in the nearby Roppongi Hills complex in the Metro Hat level basement two.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$$
Yoshihiro Narisawa worked under Paul Bocuse, Frédy Girardet, and Joël Robuchon. But at his namesake restaurant, he fuses French haute cuisine with a profound understanding of Japanese ingredients that has resulted in a style uniquely his own. Serving brilliant left-field dishes such as soil soup (yes, really) and Okinawan sea snake broth, alongside superb langoustine and wagyu beef, he more than merits his two Michelin stars and spot on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list.
Know before you go: Chef Narisawa and his team are flexible to accommodate dietary restrictions.

Open for: Dinner
Price range: $$$$
Second-generation chef Daisuke Shimazaki serves traditional Edomae sushi at Sushi Yuu, located in a quiet residential area not far from the busy Roppongi district. While some high-end sushiya can feel stiflingly formal, more like a library or a church than a convivial restaurant, chef Shimazaki puts all of his customers at ease (in English, Russian, or Italian, as well as Japanese). The meal starts off with small seasonal bites such as grilled Pacific mackerel and simmered yellowtail before the parade of nigirizushi. 
Best for: Sushi Yuu is particularly famous for tuna, which Shimazaki sources from one of Toyosu Market’s top tuna vendors.

Open for: All day
Price range: $$
Bricolage offers work by a dream team of prestigious chefs. Soups and salads come from chef Shinobu Namae of three-Michelin-starred L’Effervescence; baker Ayumu Iwanaga of Le Sucré-Coeur in Osaka contributes sourdough, baguettes, and pastries; and Kenji Kojima of Fuglen provides the coffee. Stop by for tartines and sandwiches, served on vintage blue and white dishes. Bricolage also has an outpost at Shibuya Station’s Tokyu Food Show for takeaway.
Know before you go: Take advantage of the outdoor seating, a rarity in Tokyo.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$
Chef Daisuke Nomura serves modern shojin ryori — vegetarian Buddhist cuisine —  strategically locating his restaurant Sougo in the Roppongi district to appeal to the younger, international crowd who live and work in the neighborhood. The menu includes a myriad of vegetables from land and sea, along with traditional shojin ingredients like fu (wheat gluten) and yuba (soy milk skin).  Diners wanting to learn more about Japanese food can take classes at Tokyo Cook, a cooking school located within the restaurant.
Must-try dish: The signature sesame tofu, fried or grilled to bring out a silky texture.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$
Kaiseki, Japan’s ineffable, hyper-seasonal traditional cuisine, always tastes best in its hometown, Kyoto. This can be attributed to the water, which is softer than in Tokyo. Chef Yoshihiro Murata gets around this by shipping water from the ancient capital to the Akasaka branch of his renowned Kikunoi to ensure his dashi soup stock is always perfect. In this tranquil, secluded setting, it’s almost possible to imagine you have left the metropolis far behind. 
Know before you go: Lunch is more affordable than dinner, and the menu includes several seasonal dishes served on beautiful dishware.

Open for: Drinks
Price range: $$$
An L-shaped counter made from a 500-year-old Mongolian oak tree sets the stage for an omakase flight of craft cocktails at Bar Gen Yamamoto. The eponymous proprietor returned from New York specifically to work with the Japanese palette of ingredients. The drinks, made with spirits and sake, are all low in alcohol to highlight the flavors of seasonal produce, both fruits and vegetables, including items like fava beans or sweetcorn. They’re presented in a variety of eye-catching glassware on trays decorated with flowers or greenery. With only eight seats, this ultra-quiet bar is a place to study the art of imbibing. 
Best for: The bar opens at 3 p.m. and the cocktails are small and low in alcohol, so it makes a great pre-dinner spot.

Open for: Dinner
Price range: $$$$
The team behind Central in Lima, Peru — named the No. 1 restaurant in the world in 2023 by the World’s 50 Best group — opened Maz in 2022 in the Akasaka district. Chef Santiago Fernandez oversees the menu; like Central, Maz explores the vast biodiversity of locally sourced ingredients, with about 80 percent of the ingredients sourced from Japan. Fernandez has defined his cuisine as “based on the respect for nature.” In Japan that means unique ingredients like junsai (watershield, a type of water plant), sea vegetables including hijiki and umibudo (sea grapes), and a colorful variety of seafood including uni, octopus, and shellfish. Dessert is an exploration of different expressions of cacao.
Must-try dish: Maz excels at vegetables, both from the land and sea.

Open for: Dinner, with the addition of lunch of Saturdays
Price range: $$$$
The former geisha district of Kagurazaka is worth exploring at any time, but especially as evening falls on the atmospheric narrow alleys. Even more so if you’ve booked yourself into Ishikawa for an extended, multicourse kaiseki dinner. Hideki Ishikawa’s impeccable cuisine, superb quality ingredients, and gracious welcome have won him three well-deserved Michelin stars and a host of admirers around the world.
Know before you go: Chef Ishikawa used to work at a tableware company so dining here is a delight for the palate and the eyes.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$$
At Tenko, vegetables and seasonal seafood from Tokyo Bay are battered and fried into tempura, a specialty of Tokyo. The restaurant is on the quiet backstreets of Kagurazaka in a former geisha teahouse. Second-generation chef Hitoshi Arai is a master at creating delicate and lacy tempura, serving each one as it comes out of the oil, and it’s worth trying some of the tempura with salt instead of dipping sauce to preserve the crispy covering. 
Vibe check: Part of the experience is listening to the tempura as it bubbles in the hot oil.

Open for: Drinks
Price range: $$
Music and cocktails intersect at Bar Meijiu, where Keisuke Matsumoto crafts bespoke cocktails to suit each customer’s whims. After a quick conversation about flavors and vibes — Are you in the mood for something fruity or sparkling? Or perhaps something caffeinated made with house-roasted beans? — Matsumoto works like an alchemist in a compact booth at the heart of the space to concoct the ideal beverage. The non-alcoholic drinks are also worth a try.
Vibe check: While serving customers, Matsumoto also spins items from his record collection, which includes a variety of genres but mainly jazz.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$
Built around a beautiful traditional garden, Tofuya Ukai’s low-rise complex of private rooms offers a glimpse of how Tokyo used to look and dine before the modern high-rise city developed. Multicourse meals include elaborate appetizers — like the specialty artisan bean curd served in hot pots in winter or chilled in summer — and culminate in servings of fish or meat.
Know before you go: Lunch is a good value and a nice time of day to take in the garden.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$
Yamaharu, one of the top seasonal seafood wholesalers at Toyosu Market, has opened its first restaurant in the Toranomon Hills T-Market. Uogashi Yamaharu is a casual stand-and-eat, or tachigui sushi, shop that is fun for both solo diners and small groups. Lunch is an excellent value and popular with locals. If you want to linger, come for dinner and order sake and a few otsumami small bites to start off, such as monkfish liver or cod milt, before finishing with seasonal sushi.
Know before you go: Order by tapping on a tablet.

Open for: Afternoon to evening
Price range: $$
Sachiko Tsukuda creates her unique wagashi (confections) to be paired with sake. Located in the hipster Yanesen district, the salon has earned a cult following among both wagashi and sake aficionados. Tsukuda’s signature is a modern take on dorayaki; she augments the traditional pancakes, typically stuffed with sweet azuki bean paste, by utilizing seasonal jams such as rhubarb or kumquat. She also incorporates vegetables into some of her sweets, such as jelly cakes made with burdock root or red turnips.
Know before you go: Wagashi aficionados will love Tsukuda’s hands-on baking class on nerikiri confections.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$$
For his contemporary French cuisine, chef Guillaume Bracaval sources 95 percent of his ingredients locally. Set in the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Otemachi, Michelin-starred Est features a variety of tasting menus, including items such as monkfish with house-made yuzu kosho, kombu-cured flounder, corn flan gazpacho, and pickled zucchini with tomato paste and nasturtiums. Wine aficionados will want to explore the Japanese bottle list, which is a study on unique grapes like muscat bailey A and fruity koshu, though the sommeliers can also include sake as beverage pairings. The meal finishes with sweets by pastry chef Michele Abbatemarco, including friandises utilizing honeys from various regions of Japan.
Best for: Est offers a fabulous vegetable-focused menu, a great primer on Japan’s wide variety of produce.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$
Shabusen’s simple menu is sukiyaki or shabu shabu with thin slices of marbled wagyu beef, sliced by staff into thin sheets, or pork with vegetables. Seated at a casual counter, each diner gets their own hot pot to cook their own meal — think New York diner meets high-end hot pot. Once cooked, the meat and vegetables are dipped into a nutty sesame dressing, tart ponzu, or, in the case of sukiyaki, a raw egg. Aficionados of mingei, or traditional folk crafts, will cherish the tableware and noren curtain at the entryway. 
Best for: Top-quality sukiyaki and shabu shabu, but in a quicker and more accessible format.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$$
British chef Daniel Calvert’s resume includes time at Epicure in Paris and Per Se in New York, and most recently the position of head chef at Belon in Hong Kong. His elegant, modern French cuisine skillfully incorporates Japanese ingredients such as sake lees, Hokkaido scallops, and hotaru ika (firefly squid). The tempting dishes include osetra caviar with avocado and sudachi citrus, as well as kinki (thornyhead fish) with crispy skin and saffron bouillabaisse. The restaurant, located at the Four Seasons Marunouchi just next to Tokyo Station, has exquisite service and an extensive wine list.
Know before you go: Sézanne is number one on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

Open for: Daytime
Price range: $$
No one has done as much to give Japan’s green tea culture a boost as interior designer Shinichi Ogata and his Higashiya wagashi (confectionery) shops. At his flagship store, a tranquil, capacious oasis above the madding crowds of central Ginza, the traditional wabi-sabi tea ceremony aesthetic has been given a contemporary makeover. Settle in for contemplation over premium teas, seasonal desserts (including kakigori ice in summer), and even light multicourse meals. You will emerge fully recharged.
Know before you go: Reservations required, though there’s also a takeaway counter for some of the sweets.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $
Hanayama is famous for its oni himokawa udon noodles, which are thin and flat, and served in a tanuki raccoon-shaped bowl. The fifth-generation shop is from Gunma, a region famous for flour, but better known for silky, thin udon than himokawa. Hanayama also excels at tempura, so be sure to get some meaty maitake or shrimp. 
Know before you go: Hanayama also has a new restaurant at Haneda Airport.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$
Since 2014, Roman chef and pizzaiolo Daniele Cason has been serving Roman-style pizza made from a blend of five organic Italian flours and 80 percent Italian water. The dough is fermented for 48 hours, resulting in a delicate and airy crust. The restaurant is on the 38th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in the quiet Nihonbashi district, with only eight seats at the marble countertop overlooking the open kitchen and pizza oven. Dinner is omakase-style with two seatings, and diners try eight different pizzas. The set meal begins with a pizzino of mascarpone, fior di latte cheese, olives tapenade, and truffles, but if you go at lunch be sure to order it as an appetizer. Toppings change throughout the seasons, drawing from Japan’s diverse offerings such as sansai (mountain vegetables), Nagano prosciutto, and Sado Island fresh figs.
Know before you go: The pizza has been voted third best in Asia on the 50 Top Pizza list, and Cason was named the 2022 pizza-maker of the year by the Italian awards body.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $
You’ll find dozens of shops lining this street in the Tsukishima neighborhood all serving monjayaki, a local dish similar to Osaka’s okonomiyaki. The setup at every shop is essentially the same: Diners select fillings such as mentaiko (spicy pollack roe), mochi, and cheese, and cook the monja themselves on a large iron plate set into each table with the help of a tiny spatula. The trick is to spread the mixture out thin and wait for it to crisp up (the staff will gladly show first timers the proper technique). Paired with an icy mug of beer, it’s a fun meal. 
Know before you go: The street is blocked off at night for pedestrians, letting visitors peruse the shops and giving the whole scene a festive atmosphere.

Open for: Lunch and dinner
Price range: $$$
Nowhere serves unagi (freshwater eel) like Obana. The recipe for its kabayaki — fillets of eel that are steamed, charcoal grilled, and basted with a thick, rich, sweet-savory glaze — dates back to the times of the shoguns. Expect hour-long lines (especially on weekends) for the pleasure of sitting on a hard floor (thin cushions provided) at low communal tables, with a further wait while they dispatch the eel and slowly cook it to order. The anticipation is worth it, though. Obana’s unagi is widely agreed to be the best in the city. 
Must-try dish: Unagi, of course.