Asakusa

Two kitchens on the twenty-seventh floor of the Asakusa View Hotel, about a hundred metres up: Chinese cooking under the name Karakurenai and French teppan cooking under the name Makie. Both work in courses, built around ingredients from around Japan, and both look out over the same view.

Dinner runs 17:00 to 21:00 with last orders at 20:00. Prices quoted already include a 10 percent service charge and tax, which is not always the case at this level.

Good to know

• A window table carries a ¥3,000 charge and is limited to two people.
• The anniversary plan is available with the French menu only.
• Courses change with the season and are not served over Christmas (19, 20, 24 and 25 December) or the new year (31 December to 3 January).
• Parties of four or fewer order from the regular course menu rather than the private-room plans.

A Japanese restaurant run in the manner of an izakaya, in a converted house about sixty-five years old with an earth floor. There are counter seats, tables, private rooms set apart like an annexe, and tatami rooms behind a curtain.

The dish it is known for is Edo negima-nabe, a hotpot of tuna and spring onion. The kitchen also serves shumai, duck tsukune, simmered beef tendon and simmered whale, and works with Edo vegetables such as Kameido daikon and Shinagawa turnip. The sake and shochu are chosen by the owner, who is a certified sake taster and sommelier.

Good to know

• The restaurant describes a wooden-token system — you change money into tokens at your seat at ¥100 to one token, and change the rest back when you leave — but its own page states that the tokens are currently suspended.
• On the days of the Tori-no-ichi fair the restaurant works differently: two-hour sittings, no choice of seat, and only the first floor takes walk-ins.
• Hours are later on weekdays than at weekends: 18:00 to 23:00 Monday to Friday, 17:00 to 22:00 on Saturday and Sunday.

A bar that opened in 1880 and has been in the same spot by the Kaminarimon crossing ever since. It is known for Denki Bran, a cocktail created here in 1882 with brandy as its base, blended with gin, wine, curaçao and herbs. It is 30 degrees; the Old version is 40.

The ground floor is the bar itself, where you buy a ticket at the door and then sit down. The first floor is Restaurant Kamiya, a western-style restaurant suited to families and groups, and the second is a Japanese restaurant. The main building was registered as a tangible cultural property in 2011.

Good to know

• On the ground floor you pay at the entrance first and receive a ticket; that floor does not take cards.
• Closing time is 20:00, with last orders at 19:30 — earlier than most bars.
• Closed on Tuesdays, and on two Mondays each month.

The annexe of Asakusa Ichimon, serving kaiseki, a set meal of small seasonal courses. Every seat is either a semi-private or a private room: the ground floor is partitioned, the first floor has sunken tatami rooms, and the second is a hall built to suggest a castle keep.

The monthly kaiseki starts at ¥4,500. Fish arrives from Tsukiji each morning, and the kitchen also serves the house negima-nabe, pufferfish, abalone and soft-shell turtle hotpot.

Good to know

• Closed on Sundays and public holidays — unlike the main restaurant, which opens every day.
• Groups of fifteen or more ordering the Shitamachi course or above can book on a Sunday, a holiday or a weekday lunchtime.

A bar lounge on the twenty-eighth floor of the Asakusa View Hotel, looking out over Asakusa. It serves food made with Japanese ingredients and drinks from Japanese producers.

Tea time runs from 12:00, and bar time from 17:00 to 23:00, with last orders at 22:00 for food and 22:30 for drinks. Where you sit changes the bill: the window rows carry a table charge, the counter does not.

Good to know

• After 20:00 nobody under eighteen is admitted.
• A table charge of ¥2,000 to ¥3,000 per person applies to the window seats; ask for the counter if you would rather not pay it.
• Reservations are taken by phone. The same-day line is open from 12:00 to 23:00.

A yoshoku restaurant in the back streets of Rokku, open since December 1951. Yoshoku is western food as it was rebuilt in Japan: beef stew, croquettes, omelettes and steak, cooked to go with rice and sake rather than against them. It started with ten seats at an open counter, and the building has not been rebuilt since 1960.

Beef stew is ¥3,400 and a hamburg steak ¥1,700. The sign outside carries the line the restaurant adopted around 1960, which translates roughly as "so good we apologise".

Good to know

• Closed on Thursdays.
• Last orders are at 21:00.
• Almost everything can be ordered to take away; the restaurant asks you to phone ahead.

A sukiyaki and shabu-shabu restaurant that opened in 1895 and is now in its fourth generation on Kokusai-dori, next to the Tsukuba Express exit. It uses Japanese black beef, female cattle only, selected from across the country, and also serves Kobe beef.

It is open every day of the year, from 11:30 to 21:30 with last orders at 20:30. The ground floor has chairs and a raised tatami area, and there are three private rooms seating up to eight.

Good to know

• Reservations cannot start later than 19:00, even though the restaurant serves until 20:30.
• A 10% service charge is added once one person's order reaches ¥5,500.
• A seat dish of beef simmered in soy sauce, ¥440 per person, comes with the standard menu.
• The third floor keeps shorter hours, 11:30 to 19:30.

A buffet on the twenty-sixth floor of the Asakusa View Hotel, looking out at Tokyo Skytree and the roofs of Sensoji. Grilled dishes are cooked in the restaurant's own kiln over lava stone from Mount Fuji, tempura is fried in front of you, and the spread runs to about a hundred dishes.

Dinner runs 17:00 to 21:00 on weekdays, and 17:00 to 21:30 at weekends and on holidays in two sittings, at 17:00 and 19:30. Each booking lasts two hours from the time it starts.

Good to know

• The view costs extra. Window seats are ¥1,000 for a pair or ¥1,500 for a table of up to eight, and they are the only seats you can ask for by name.
• The restaurant states plainly that some seats in the hall have no view at all.
• Buffet prices change every month or two; the figures here are the ones published for October 2026.

A restaurant that opened in 1929 and serves tororo, grated yam, with barley rice. The main dining rooms are on the first to third floors, and the roof holds a space that works as a buffet by day and a bar called Lounge Vista by night.

Lounge Vista opens at 18:00 and serves small dishes and drinks until 22:30, with last entry at 20:30. It is reservation-only, and bookings close the day before.

Good to know

• The rooftop bar is reservation-only and bookings close the day before, so it cannot be visited on the spur of the moment.
• Booking a table in the main dining rooms carries a minimum food order per person, which is higher at weekends and in private rooms.
• Online booking closes at 15:00 the day before; same-day requests go by phone.
• Hours differ depending on whether a Sunday or public holiday falls in the middle or at the end of a run of holidays.

A bar-style restaurant on the ground floor of the Asakusa View Hotel, open from 17:30 to 22:00 with last orders at 21:00 for food and 21:30 for drinks. The room has a high ceiling and music playing, and is meant to be walked into rather than planned around.

It is the plain option in a hotel whose other two night venues both charge for the seat: the bar on the twenty-eighth floor and the buffet on the twenty-sixth. There is no view from here, and no table charge.

Good to know

• On the ground floor, so there is no view; the window seats are upstairs and cost extra.
• Food last orders are at 21:00, half an hour before drinks.