Neighborhood restaurants are different from those where the lights are brighter and overheads (and expectations) higher. Almost by definition they're more casual and down-home, rougher around the edges, simpler and less stylish. Iri doesn't fit that pattern at all.
Hidden from sight down a narrow residential side street where few but the locals are likely to pass by, it's certainly not a destination you'd cross town to eat at. But Iri is one of the nicest-looking restaurants you're likely to find anywhere in the city.
The first thing you notice are the huge windows, a glass-fronted facade set back at an angle from the street, drawing your gaze inside to the chefs in their gleaming open kitchen and to the spacious dining room beyond. Inside and out, Iri looks so sharp and contemporary you barely register that it's a conversion, a small one-story wooden house built decades ago when this area, Uehara, really was on the outskirts of Tokyo.