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April 28, 2024
 

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RESTAURANTS

LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 8, 2001
Roti: Brash, bright, cheerful and fun
As a matter of principle, the Food File doesn't write up places within the first few weeks of their opening. Instead we prefer to wait until the kitchen has settled in properly and recovered from the inevitable strain of dealing with the local media and the surge of customers that inevitably follow.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 25, 2001
Isegen: Stoking the inner embers, Edo style
As the snow wafts down and the forecasters warn of arctic conditions to come, spare a thought for the folks of ancient Edo, who had to make it through the winter months without such essential survival tools as fleece jackets, cup ramen and Hokaron hand warmers.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 11, 2001
Taking stock of the new ryori
Before intrepidly setting out to eat our way through this brave new century, let us pause briefly to consider the state of contemporary Japanese dining. Needless to say, the situation is very different from 100 years ago, when most people were fed by itinerant hawkers, yatai stalls or simple food outlets set into houses at street level, and when Yokohama gyu-nabe, omu-raisu and other yoshoku exotica were considered the height of sophisticated dining out.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 28, 2000
Looking back at the future
In honor of that particularly Japanese custom of creating instant tradition ("Since 1999"), this last column of the year peers forward by looking back. Here are just three of the many new places we have visited and enjoyed during the past 12 months but never got around to writing up.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 14, 2000
Dining out in year-end style
With Christmas a mere 10 days away, it is unlikely that anyone has failed to make their arrangements for celebrations, either on the day itself or during the Yuletide run-up. However, just in time for the season of good cheer, overeating and loosening of purse strings, here are two places (opened in the past month) with just the kind of atmosphere for that special occasion.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 23, 2000
A night at the culinary opera
Let it be stated unequivocably and from the outset: The Food File is not a great fan of gastrodomes and flashy new mega-restaurants where style outweighs substance and quality is sacrificed at the altar of fleeting fashion. Nor are we enamored of restaurant chains, where menus -- no matter how titillatingly tilted toward the fad for fusion -- are decided by absentee executive chefs and implemented in the manner of fast-food franchises.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 9, 2000
Now is the season of our great content
It's all too easy to take for granted a restaurant of the caliber of Les Saisons. Ensconced within the venerable portals of the Imperial Hotel, it is plush, self-assured and runs with the same effortless reliability as a well-tuned Bentley sports car. You just know that an evening at table is going to be wonderful (it always is) but, inevitably, within a conservative, patrician frame of reference.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 27, 2000
The highs and lows of izakaya dining
The ethereal, powder-blue fiber-optic lights that illuminate the entrance to Yui-an give a remarkable sense of stepping into another dimension -- a sensation heightened by the high-speed elevator ride to the top of the Sumitomo Building. With your brain suitably befuddled before you even get through the door, the effect of looking down on the night city from 52 floors up is nothing short of spectacular.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 12, 2000
Cardenas Charcoal Grill: Californian fare grilled to perfection
Fumihiro Nakamura does not affect the expansive personality and well-studied bonhomie of a born restaurateur in the classic European mold. Nor does he in any way exude the slick professionalism and marketing savvy of the streetwise MBAs who scheme up and preside over flash designer eateries for cash-flush upwardly mobile entrepreneurs and their corporate camp followers.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 12, 2000
Californian fare grilled to perfection
Fumihiro Nakamura does not affect the expansive personality and well-studied bonhomie of a born restaurateur in the classic European mold. Nor does he in any way exude the slick professionalism and marketing savvy of the streetwise MBAs who scheme up and preside over flash designer eateries for cash-flush upwardly mobile entrepreneurs and their corporate camp followers.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 28, 2000
Trendy slurping in Azabu-Juban
All things must pass -- especially, it seems, the good stuff. So a final farewell, then, to the old Azabu-Juban we used to know and love, with its funky, friendly mom 'n' pop stores, cheap nomiya and overpriced wine bars, and its faintly musty smells of onsen and kimchi.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 14, 2000
Hannibal: Tunisian flavors in Shin-Okubo
Don't roll up at Hannibal with ideas about mysterious Middle Eastern souks, exotic belly dancers or desert caravansaries. Nor should you expect ancient classical motifs and provender of Punic proportions. Just forget you ever saw the movie "Casablanca" (and don't even mention "The Silence of the Lambs").
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 14, 2000
Tunisian flavors in Shin-Okubo
Don't roll up at Hannibal with ideas about mysterious Middle Eastern souks, exotic belly dancers or desert caravansaries. Nor should you expect ancient classical motifs and provender of Punic proportions. Just forget you ever saw the movie "Casablanca" (and don't even mention "The Silence of the Lambs").
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Aug 24, 2000
Al fresco evenings in Heisei style
Just when you feel it's safe to venture out of the air conditioning to enjoy a drink or three in the mellow evening air of the late summer, that's about the time most beer gardens are starting to think about shutting down for the year.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Aug 10, 2000
Spicing up life on the Shonan coast
This is hardly the most obvious name for an Indian restaurant. It started life some four years ago as a friendly little Bengal-accented cafe-restaurant in the back streets on the other side of the station, quickly making a name for itself as a reliable spot for authentic Indian cooking. Then three months ago they moved closer to the main tourist drag.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 27, 2000
Obana: Heat got you down? Eel thyself
Obana is certainly not the most illustrious of Tokyo's unagi restaurants. How could it be when most of the flash money lies west of the Ginza, not up in blue-collar Arakawa-ku? But there are plenty of people, especially those of humbler birth, who will go to the grave swearing by the name of their ancestors that nowhere in the city prepares broiled eel better than this.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 13, 2000
Giang's, Cyclo: Far away, yet so close to Hanoi
It's getting to be that time of year when it feels as if this part of Japan has been towed down to Southeast Asia and temporarily moored somewhere in the Mekong Delta. If only that were so. For us it's not the muggy weather and tropical downpours that we complain about -- it's the dearth of creative, well-prepared Vietnamese food in this city.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jun 8, 2000
Fresh innovations at home in Tsukiji
Urban dining myth number one: The closer you eat to Tsukiji, the better quality the fish must be.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
May 25, 2000
On a culinary cruise in Akasaka
We have numerous restaurants which bear the name of their chefs, owners or svengalis. But Denis Allemand is perhaps the first to proudly boast the name of the man responsible for its interior design -- whose main work in Japan up to now has been producing deli-diners in airport departure lobbies for the Royal group.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
May 11, 2000
French with a difference
We have no shortage of bargain-basement French-accented bistros scattered around the metropolis. But for my money, Tete-a-tete is the cream of the current crop. I could reel off about a dozen cogent reasons why I rate this little place so highly. But there's only one that you really need to know -- it is brilliant value.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
In Japan, regional revitalization fails to halt population decline
Sakiyama elementary school in Tamba, Hyogo Prefecture, in March .Over the past decade, the government has directed efforts toward policies designed to give young people incentives to base themselves in rural areas.
Number of homeless in Japan hits record low
Homeless people sleep on the street in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward in August 2021.
Ukraine is far from doomed
When comparing Ukraine’s military situation in 2024 to Europe’s in 1941, Russia’s defeat seems entirely possible.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Tokyo's Koto Ward by-election a race unlike any other
Natsumi Sakai, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan’s candidate and one of four female candidates running in the by-election, touts her experience as a cancer survivor and midwife as having prepared her to tackle issues that women currently face.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Casa del Cibo: A thriving jewel born from Tohoku’s harsh past
When chef Ryohei Ikemi moved to Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, and opened Casa del Cibo in 2011, it was the first proper Italian restaurant in the city.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
Top U.S. and China diplomats talk tough amid warnings of new ‘downward spiral’
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Friday

Podcast

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.
[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 34: Tokyo, a vanguard city for sustainability
Vol. 34: Tokyo, a vanguard city for sustainability

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