Even in Tokyo, a city that relentlessly reinvents itself, change never comes easy, no matter how celebrated a restaurant may be. The bigger the name, the greater the expectations, and few have larger reputations than Nihonryori RyuGin. Chef Seiji Yamamoto's contemporary take on Japan's traditional ...

Konjiki Hototogisu is exactly the kind of new-wave noodle counter that old-school ramen grinches love to hate. It's squeaky clean and has a rustic wooden frontage. The delicate noodles are handmade in-house. The soups are light, complex and deep, with none of that porky ...

Wana Tedome doesn't mess with any ordinary meat. "Deer, not cow. Boar, not pig," the illuminated street-level sign outside proclaims in Japanese. "Grilled venison, grilled boar and grilled pheasant." Welcome to where the wild things are. To emphasize the point, that same sign shows a stag's ...

As you head to your table at Lature, don't be surprised if you spot your dinner curled up on the counter by the kitchen. It might be a mandarin duck, a mallard or a pheasant from Okinawa, resplendent in its plumage. At this time ...

It is not hard to track down the very best of Tokyo's high-end Japanese restaurants. After all, there are plenty of guides and websites to point you on your way. At street level, too, it's easy to locate good noodle joints, yakitori counters or ...

The cheap, cheerful, crowded, smoke-patinated dives that populate the lower floors of Shinbashi's Ekimae Building are an enduring time capsule of old-school, after-work salaryman drinking culture. Ibrew's craft beer pub has only been open there for a year, but its no-frills, low-budget approach makes ...

The old-school, low-rise district of Yanaka boasts tree-lined streets, temples aplenty, fresh air and a sense of connection with Tokyo's past that has long been paved over elsewhere. What it lacks — and this is a plus, not a minus — is a subway ...

There are plenty of reasons to mourn the closure of Tsukiji's legendary wholesale market, and many more to bemoan its successor in Toyosu. Not least is the dearth of good, established restaurants out on that sterile landfill location. So it is comforting at least to ...

A generation back, the average izakaya tavern was noisy, cheap, smoky and the clientele overwhelmingly male. There would usually be one brand of beer; two choices of sake, warmed or room temperature; and food that ranged from reliable to rough and ready. Things have changed. ...

PST: The large neon letters shining in the evening gloom spell out a very familiar welcome. And once you're inside, so do the sizzling pizzas with their rough-formed, carbon-flecked rims being pulled from the squat, no-nonsense, gunmetal-black, wood-fired oven. Anyone who has eaten at ...