Tokyo for Food Lovers

Book excerpt: Discover the coolest places to eat in Tokyo from smoky yakiniku eateries and steaming ramen restaurants, to cocktail bars the size of wardrobes and rowdy punk izakaya joints with fantastic small plated dishes and spotlessly clean lavatories. Author Jonas Cramby says, 'Writing a restaurant guide to Tokyo seems close to an impossible task. Tokyo, as it happens, is not simply the best food city in the world, it is also the largest. The city is thought to contain more than 150,000 restaurants, which makes even the 10,000 catering establishments of New York, by comparison seem like the regional centre of a small and sleepy town. It has the best raw produce, the most brilliant chefs and the highest number of Michelin stars in the world. Tokyo is a city in which extreme care and concern for detail is not the sole preserve of fine dining – it exists everywhere. The city is packed with simple, fun, cheap and, above all, fabulously good eateries and this book is my highly personal guide to these places.' Organised into chapters for different types of food experiences, this guide includes many great photos and interviews with local chefs. It will help you to locate the finest kitchens and food stores on offer, decipher menus and rules of etiquette, and advise you on first-class dining close to wherever you are in the city.