Job Discussion Forums

[johanne]

I've had lots of nice food in Tokyo, but I have to say the best food I had in Japan, especially sea food or izakaya style food was in Kanazawa, Ishikawa ken. Obviously a bit off the beaten track, but really excellent, fresh food.

[southofreality]

[gaijinalways]

Hmm, some very good restaurants, yes, the best restaurant city, well...

I'm lucky in that I have a few good places right near me (one of the advantages of living in downtown Tokyo). We eat good Turkish food, Russian (Shinjuku), Italian, Thai, Indian, Nepalese, Pakistani, and reasonable Chinese. There are real good Korean places in Shin Okubo, a regular Asian street as well as a Korean market.

The places I mention are not necessarily pricey. Pricey places are easy to find in Tokyo, though the quality is not always guaranteed, nor the size of the portions. I've always seen Tokyo as havbing a vast number of restaurants, not necessarily a large number of quality ones (as compared to NY, London, Hong Kong, etc).

edited to add some overlooked restaurants

[azarashi sushi]

The article does say that Paris still has the most top-rated restaurants and the headline is clearly just to get reader's attention.

I agree that Toyko has A LOT of cr@ppy restaurants and eating out cheaply can be a pretty nasty experience. That's one thing I miss about Sydney... There is such a huge variety of good restaurants at the cheaper end. Of course paying a lot of money is no automatic guarrantee of quality but neither is going to your local "mom and pop" place ... You need to look around! The good restaurants do exist!

[gaijinalways]

I guess we didn't look hard enough. The only cheaper restaurants we found were all in China town !

[markle]

I notice that many people are fixated on fact that there is apprently a limited variety of food in Tokyo. Why is this important? I mean Paris is obviously a culinary capital but it's not because it has a plethora of Mexican restaurants is it? Maybe it's because if there weren't Italian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Turkish and Thai restaurants all North Americans, Brits and Australians could go out to eat at would be fish'n'chips, hamburgers and bad steak restaurants. When you have a distinctive, exciting cuisine of your own who needs to import one?

[gaijinalways]

[markle]

[gaijinalways]

I don't know how often I would go to Michelin rated restaurants, my salary is not quite in that company ! As to haute cuisine (literally high cooking), some Japanese recipes are imported, and often just a variation of the original, which I might consider gimmicky .

[JakeJakeJake]

have spent about 10 weekends in tokyo. never had a standout meal. ermmmm.....thinking..... nope. then again japanese food is pretty shite compared to most countries cuisine. the best is stolen from china an korea, then all thats left is sushi and 'ustsukushii' things like turtle organ soup and fucking tonkatsu

[TK4Lakers]

Everyone saying Tokyo isn't all that doesn't know Tokyo.

So, you haven't found any good places? then look them up. Search on the internet, or read the magazines..or maybe you can't read Japanese?

There are plenty of delicious, excellent restaurants...you just gotta know where they are, and networking doesn't hurt.

Japan is known for it's excellent cuisines, and for fusion food. You probably won't find much in the smaller, quiet parts of Tokyo, but go to Shinjuku, Ebisu, Shinagawa and you'll find plenty.

[gaijinalways]