Take Tokyo one neighbourhood a day and it stops being too big

Dishes to know

Edomae nigiri-zushi

Hand-pressed vinegared rice with a slice of fish, originally an Edo street snack eaten in a couple of bites.

Traditionally the fish is cured, marinated or lightly cooked rather than raw and cold. Counters that serve omakase set the pace, and lunch sets are far cheaper than the same counter at night.

Soba

Buckwheat noodles served cold with dipping sauce (mori/zaru) or hot in broth.

Tachigui (standing) soba counters inside and beside train stations are the everyday version. Slurping is expected, and a serious shop lists its buckwheat ratio, like nihachi at 80% buckwheat.

Monjayaki

A loose, gravy-like cabbage-and-batter griddle dish you cook yourself and scrape up with tiny metal spatulas.

Tokyo’s own answer to okonomiyaki, concentrated in Tsukishima. Eat it straight off the hotplate in small scrapes rather than plating it up.

Unagi kabayaki / unadon

Freshwater eel split down the back, grilled, steamed, then glazed and grilled again over charcoal, served on rice.

The Kanto steaming step is what makes it soft, and a Tokyo shop that skips it is doing the Osaka style. Ordering takes 20-40 minutes at a proper shop, and that wait is a good sign.

Fukagawa-meshi

Rice topped or cooked with a miso broth of littleneck clams, tofu and spring onion.

Old fishermen’s fast food from the Fukagawa and Monzen-nakacho side of the river. It comes in a soupy ‘donburi’ style and a steamed ‘takikomi’ style.

Yakitori and motsuyaki

Chicken parts, and separately pork offal, skewered and grilled over binchotan charcoal.

Order by the skewer and say tare (sauce) or shio (salt). The smoky under-the-tracks stalls in Yurakucho and Shinjuku’s alleys are motsuyaki as much as yakitori, and most open only from late afternoon.

Tonkatsu / teishoku

Breaded deep-fried pork cutlet served as a set with rice, shredded cabbage and miso soup.

The teishoku set format, a main plus rice, soup and pickles, is how the city eats lunch. Rice and cabbage refills are usually free, and you can ask for okawari.

Ramen (and tsukemen)

Wheat noodles in a seasoned broth. Tsukemen serves thick noodles beside a concentrated dipping broth.

Almost every shop is a single-style specialist. Order at the shokkenki ticket machine by the door, hand the ticket over, eat fast and go. Lingering after you finish is bad form at a queued counter.

Chanko-nabe

The big communal hotpot of meat, seafood and vegetables eaten by sumo wrestlers.

A Ryogoku speciality, near the sumo stadium. It’s a shared sit-down dinner for two or more rather than a solo bowl.

Kissaten morning set

Thick-cut buttered toast, boiled egg and coffee served as a fixed morning set in an old-style coffee house.

Usually served until around 11am, and the same cafes do napolitan spaghetti and pudding. It’s the closest thing Tokyo has to a sit-down breakfast habit.

Where to eat

Tsukishima / Monzen-nakacho (Shitamachi riverside)

Monja alleys and old Fukagawa clam rice in a low-rise neighbourhood where the restaurants serve locals on weeknights rather than coach parties.

Yurakucho / Shinbashi under the tracks

The classic after-work grilled-offal-and-beer strip. Smoke, plastic stools, salarymen, and standing bars that fill from 6pm and empty by 10.

Koenji and Nakano (Chuo line west)

Cheap independent curry shops, tiny yakitori grills and standing bars packed into alleys. Prices and menus are aimed at the people who live there.

Sangenjaya / Shimokitazawa (Setagaya)

Residential-scale nightlife, narrow lanes of six-seat izakaya and second-wave coffee, where you can walk in without a reservation on a weekday.

Kita-Senju or Ueno/Ameyoko

Working shopping streets. Croquettes and prepared food from butchers and delis by day, cheap standing seafood and skewers by early evening.

What to walk past

Anything a tout walks you to. Kabukicho’s Central Road, Roppongi and the Shibuya centre-gai side streets are where bottakuri (inflated-bill) bars operate, usually on upper floors of multi-tenant buildings with no real online presence, an all-you-can-drink pitch and an undisclosed seat charge. On the food side, skip the Tsukiji Outer Market stalls selling giant novelty skewers to queues of tourists. Be wary of any restaurant with a big photo menu in several languages and a person outside inviting you in. Tokyo’s good shops don’t need to recruit.

Markets

Tsukiji Outer Market

Roughly 5:00-14:00, closed Sundays and public holidays, and many shops close on the Wednesdays when Toyosu is shut

Still a working retail street for knives, dried goods, tamagoyaki and seafood, with sushi breakfasts from early morning. Go before 9am to see it trading rather than performing.

Toyosu Market

Tue-Sat generally, closed Sundays and some Wednesdays. Tuna auction viewing from around 5:30am, restaurants from early morning

The wholesale fish market that replaced Tsukiji’s inner market in 2018, with viewing decks over the auction floor and market-worker restaurants upstairs.

Ameyoko (Ueno)

Most stalls roughly 10:00-19:00 daily, individual shops vary

A loud post-war street market under the train tracks for dried seafood, fruit, spices and cheap standing seafood bars. Good for grazing rather than sitting.

Depachika (department store food basements, e.g. Shinjuku, Ginza, Ikebukuro)

Roughly 10:00-20:00 daily, with discounts on prepared food in the last hour or two

More a department store basement than a street market, and the best single survey of Japanese prepared food anywhere in the city. The late-evening markdowns on bento and sashimi are a local habit.

When people eat

Breakfast is small and early, or skipped. A konbini onigiri, a standing soba, or a kissaten toast set before eleven. Lunch is the sharp one, 11:30 to 14:00, when almost every restaurant, expensive sushi and tempura counters included, runs a cheap fixed set. Then a lot of shops shut until dinner. Izakaya fill from about seven and take last orders around eleven outside the nightlife districts. Turning up at half three expecting a proper meal marks you as a visitor, and it’s the main reason people come home saying Tokyo food was mediocre. At that hour the only doors open are the ones open for tourists.

Eating cheaply

Eat at counters and vending-machine shops. Ramen, curry, gyudon, tonkatsu and standing soba all take a shokkenki ticket machine at the door, often cash or IC card only. Feed the money in first, press the top-left button, which is usually the shop’s signature bowl, then hand the ticket to the cook and sit. Lunch sets between 11:30 and 14:00 save you more than anything else in the city, and often include free rice and cabbage refills. After that, convenience-store onigiri and egg sandwiches are good, supermarket and depachika bento get marked down heavily in the last hours of trading, bakeries and station stands do cheap savoury pastries, and standing bars (tachinomi) let you drink and snack without a cover charge. Seated izakaya usually add an otoshi, a small compulsory appetiser charge, and it isn’t a scam.

If you don't eat everything

Vegetarian

Hard, and the trap is stock rather than visible meat. Dashi made from katsuobushi (bonito) is in miso soup, noodle broths, simmered vegetables, tamagoyaki and most ‘vegetable’ dishes, and ramen broth is usually pork or chicken even when the toppings look vegetal. Asking ‘is it vegetarian?’ will often get a yes because no meat is visible. Ask instead for ‘katsuo-dashi wa haitte imasu ka?’ (does it contain bonito stock?) and ‘niku to sakana no dashi nashi de dekimasu ka?’ (can it be made without meat or fish stock?). Reliable options are shojin ryori (Buddhist temple cuisine), dedicated vegan places, kombu-dashi soba shops that say so, and inari or umeboshi onigiri. Zaru soba with a plain sauce isn’t safe by default, because the tsuyu contains dashi.

Gluten free

Difficult. Standard Japanese soy sauce is brewed with wheat, so it’s in almost every sauce, dressing, teriyaki, tsuyu and simmered dish. Soba is usually cut with wheat flour unless the shop states juwari (100% buckwheat), and miso, mirin-based glazes and imitation crab are risks too. Carry a Japanese celiac card, seek out tamari-based or certified gluten-free restaurants, of which Tokyo has a small but growing number, and treat plain rice, sashimi with salt, grilled fish with shio seasoning and yakitori ordered shio rather than tare as the safest defaults. Cross-contamination in fryers and shared noodle water is common and mostly not understood.

Halal and other

Manageable with planning. Tokyo has a growing set of halal-certified restaurants and halal ramen and yakiniku shops, concentrated around Shinjuku, Asakusa, Ueno and near the Tokyo Camii mosque in Yoyogi-Uehara, plus prayer rooms in major stations, airports and some department stores. Assume mirin and cooking sake are in most sauces and that pork stock and lard are everywhere, so verify rather than infer from a dish’s name.