Collection: JAPAN RESTAURANTS

Eating well in Japan is a city-by-city business. Kyoto cooks for temples and seasonal restraint; Osaka cooks to eat and drink loudly; Tokyo has more Michelin stars than any city on earth and also the best 700-yen lunch; Nagoya has a cuisine of its own that the rest of the country teases but quietly respects; Fukuoka is tonkotsu ramen and open-air food stalls on the pavement.

We plan meals into the day rather than around it — which is why a market breakfast is worth restructuring a morning for, and a three-hour kaiseki is not worth attempting on a day with a train to catch.

Kyoto

Kyo-ryori — temple cuisine, kaiseki, and a preference for subtlety over intensity. The best tables are small, need booking a month out, and often take reservations only by telephone in Japanese. Nishiki market for the daytime, Pontocho for the evening.

Osaka

The country’s eating-and-drinking city: takoyaki, okonomiyaki, kushikatsu, and Dotonbori after dark. Less formal than Kyoto and about a third of the price for the same quality.

Tokyo

Everything, at every price. Sushi at dawn in Toyosu, ramen at any hour, and a concentration of serious kitchens in Ginza and Kagurazaka. Book the famous places far ahead; eat the everyday food without a plan.

Nagoya

Miso-katsu, hitsumabushi (grilled eel over rice, eaten in four stages), and tebasaki chicken wings. Underrated, and the one regional cuisine Japanese travellers themselves seek out.

Fukuoka

Tonkotsu ramen at its source, and yatai — open-air stalls along the river where you sit next to strangers and order until the stall closes. The most sociable eating in Japan.

How we handle bookings

Where a reservation matters we make it, usually a month ahead. Where a place takes no bookings at all, we say so and plan the queue into the morning instead of pretending otherwise. Dietary restrictions and children are raised at the time of booking, not on the night.

Tell us which cities you are visiting — we will build the eating around them.

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