Phoebe Amoroso

The sky seems to be the limit for Tokyo’s Virtu — and I’m not talking about its location on the 39th floor atop the Four Seasons Tokyo hotel in Otemachi. The bar is this year’s winner of the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award as part of the 2024 iteration of the Asia’s 50 Best Bars rankings...

Satoru Araki is meticulously slicing a prime cut of chutoro (medium fatty tuna) into morsels as he serves up a course of nigirizushi (hand-pressed sushi) in the backstreets of the upmarket Tokyo suburb of Hiroo.

A former professional boxer, Araki opened Sushi Satoru in July 2022 -- a simple counter of six seats that has already generated a buzz in Tokyo's sushi scene. On the counter is a copy of The Michelin Guide Tokyo 2024, in which Sushi Satoru is mentioned for the first time...

There’s a pocket of Tokyo, strolling distance from the stock exchange and the former commercial center, which feels like a step back in time. Ningyocho is filled with stores specializing in traditional crafts, some more than 100 years old. Here you can buy rice crackers or traditional Japanese sweets or head for a kimono, before watching kabuki (traditional Japanese theater) at Meijiza.

“Don’t talk over the sake.” Sake evangelist Gordon Heady is holding a cup, reverentially, and pauses slightly before lifting it to his lips.He is instructing us on how to evaluate the liquid properly. Take a sip, hold it in your mouth, breathe in slightly through your mouth, swill it round, swallow, breath out through your nose. Sit with the aftertaste. Let it develop.

It’s almost meditative.

Sometimes Tokyo feels like a simulacrum, a pixel-generated city restlessly tearing itself down and rebuilding itself in the latest image of a megacity. The Shibuya skyline morphed over the past decade, punctuated by mega malls. This year has brought the opening of Azabudai Hills, a mega complex that features offices, residences, and even an international school, the latest articulation of developer Mori Building’s vision to raise the “international competitiveness” of Tokyo.
Yet, for many, th...

The Gion district of Kyoto embodies the romanticism that surrounds Japan’s ancient capital. Filled with machiya (traditional long wooden houses), it harbors several “teahouses,” where geiko — the Kyoto term for geisha – entertain their high-class guests with quick-witted conversation and skilled musical performances.

Yet just north of Shijo Street, the neighborhood evolves into a very different kind of entertainment area. Narrow alleyways are filled with small bars, many of which are ...

Our introduction to Yakinikuen takes place on a Saturday night. Two German friends, former Tokyo residents and long-time fans of the restaurant, were determined to take an edible trip down memory lane.
“We’ll already be in the queue. Hurry!” they told us. Reservations at Yakinikuen, apparently, are only taken for weekdays before 7 p.m., and so they had lined up to secure a table. “It’s an underground joint with the best meat,” they said.
That was all we had been told. Normally, we might think...

“I think the world basically loves Thai cuisine.”

Chef Bo Songvisava is speaking to me from the lounge in the newly opened Dusit Thani Kyoto hotel, where she aims to bring a new taste of Thailand to Japan’s ancient capital. Songvisava is curating the menu of the hotel’s flagship Thai restaurant, Ayatana, alongside her husband, Dylan Jones.

Tokyo is arguably one of the greatest culinary capitals in the world. The city boasts more than 100,000 establishments, from mom-and-pop shokudo (informal restaurants with set menus) to cutting-edge fine dining, as well as five-seater backstreet bars and several entries on this year’s Asia’s 50 Best Bars list. ...

Inside a 23rd-floor restaurant overlooking Yokohama Bay, diners are contemplating a chawanmushi (steamed custard), silky smooth and topped with thin slices of asparagus and smoky sea urchin. It would seem like any other Japanese meal, but the tables are decked with Swedish maypoles, and Swedish beer and cider feature prominently on the drinks menu.

Stumbling upon a haggis toastie store in the middle of Tokyo sounds like a half-remembered dream where nothing quite makes sense.

It was the minimalist black store front with white type that had initially drawn us to it. It looked like a store straight out of London, and certainly not like a café that one would expect to find next to Japan’s Olympic stadium.

t the 10th anniversary of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, perhaps the biggest reason to celebrate was that fact it was happening with international guests in attendance.

Held at Singapore’s glitzy yet theme park-esque Resorts World Sentosa on March 28, the welcome reception was buzzing with reunions between Asia’s top chefs delighted to see their peers after the pandemic drove previous events online. Despite Japan’s relative isolation over the past three years, the country proved as much as ever that it’s a star player in the Asian gastronomic scene.

Whereas the Tokyo Midtown complex in Roppongi was poised as a high-end competitor to Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown Hibiya offers a slightly more accessible space plus a terrace with a great view of the Imperial Palace Garden, Tokyo Midtown Yaesu stands out in providing and promoting public space where people can simply hang out, marking a welcome rarity in Japan’s hyper-regulated capital...

Hakko Department—“fermentation department”—opened in 2020 as part of Bonus Track, an eclectic shopping area that came as the area was redeveloped by the Odakyu Corporation when it moved a major train track underground.

It’s part-shop, part-cafe, part-museum; a space dedicated to Japan’s fermentation culture and beyond.

Shine a black light on Gold Bar’s latest cocktail menu, Two Faces, for more than meets the eye: famed temple Sensoji is suddenly surrounded by Shinjuku neon, a kabuki actor wielding a makizushi (rolled sushi) is joined by a burrito-brandishing Mexican skeleton, and a lonely, dead tree mysteriously bursts into full bloom.
The menu highlights the duality in life: light and dark, strength and weakness, traditional and modern. On one page, a beautiful woman in an ornate kimono coyly holds a fan, ...