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Tokyo for Food Lovers

Tokyo, Japan · Food · 16,000 words

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What this is

Not a list of famous restaurants. How eating in Tokyo actually works: which counters take walk-ins, how to order when there is no English menu, what a place with a queue is telling you, and which neighborhoods reward wandering. Includes the eating that happens in basements, train stations, and department stores.

Who wrote it

Written by a cook who moved to Tokyo. Six years, and a standing rule of one new place a week.

What is inside

  1. 01How to read a Tokyo restaurant from the outside
  2. 02Counters, queues, and ticket machines
  3. 03Ordering with no shared language
  4. 04Neighborhood by neighborhood, and what each does best
  5. 05Department store basements
  6. 06Eating well at a train station
  7. 07Drinking, and the food that comes with it
  8. 08What to book weeks ahead, and what never to book
  9. 09Dietary restrictions, honestly

Free sample

The first thing to unlearn is that a queue means a place is good. In Tokyo a queue often just means a place is small, was on television, or is the only one open at that hour. Some of the best food in the city has an empty counter at seven in the evening because it seats nine people and everyone who eats there already knows to come at six.

What actually tells you something is the specificity. A shop that sells one thing, has sold it for decades, and has no second item on the menu is making a bet that only works if the thing is good. A place with eleven categories and photographs of all of them is making a different bet.

The second thing to unlearn is that you need reservations. A handful of places require them months out and are worth it. The overwhelming majority of excellent eating in Tokyo is walk-in, counter seating, cash, and done in forty minutes.

The full guide continues for 16,000 words.

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