Typical Food in Tokyo: What to Eat on Your First Trip

Edomae: the original Tokyo food

Before it was called Tokyo, the city was Edo, and much of what is now thought of as Tokyo food took shape there during the Edo period (1603 to 1867). GO TOKYO, the city's official travel guide, describes Edo in the 1800s as a busy city of a million people, where people grabbed quick meals of soba, tempura, and boxes of vinegared rice and fish from street stalls.

You will see the word Edomae, meaning "in front of Edo", on signs and menus. It referred to the bay in front of the city, and sushi made with fish from that bay came to be called Edomae sushi. Today it often appears on sushi menus, as a way of saying the restaurant works in the Tokyo tradition.

Famous food in Tokyo: the classics

Sushi is the obvious place to start. According to GO TOKYO, nigiri, a slice of fish on a small block of vinegared rice, first appeared at the street stalls of Edo in the 1800s, in pieces two or three times the size of today's. You can eat it at a conveyor-belt shop, a stand-up bar or a counter where a chef serves you piece by piece.

Tempura is seafood and vegetables fried in a light batter. Some restaurants serve it at a counter, piece by piece as it comes out of the oil. Tendon, tempura on a bowl of rice with a sweet sauce, is a cheaper and quicker way to try it.

Soba are thin buckwheat noodles, served cold with a dipping sauce or hot in broth. GO TOKYO calls soba a major local speciality of Tokyo, and it is one of the few dishes where slurping is encouraged. Soba shops range from counters inside stations to old restaurants with tatami rooms.

Unagi is freshwater eel, grilled with a sweet soy glaze and served over rice. The Tokyo way of cooking it is different from the way it is done in Osaka and Kyoto: the eel is opened down the back, grilled plain, steamed, and then grilled again with the sauce.

Food tied to Tokyo neighbourhoods

Some dishes belong to one part of the city. Monjayaki is a runny batter of flour, shredded cabbage and other ingredients cooked on a hotplate at your table and eaten straight from it with a small spatula. It is tied to Tsukishima, a district on the bay, where a street called Tsukishima Monja Street is lined with monjayaki restaurants.

Chanko nabe, a hot pot of meat, seafood and vegetables eaten by sumo wrestlers, belongs to Ryogoku, the home of the Kokugikan sumo arena. The area has many sumo stables, and local restaurants serve chanko nabe to visitors. Fukagawa-meshi, rice with clams in a miso broth, or rice cooked with clams, comes from the Fukagawa area near the mouth of the Sumida River, where it began as a quick meal for fishermen.

Asakusa is where to look for two traditional snacks. Kaminari okoshi, crisp bars of puffed rice held together with sugar and syrup, were first sold by street sellers near the Kaminarimon gate in the 18th century. Ningyo-yaki, small cakes baked in iron moulds, with or without sweet bean paste inside, take their name from Ningyocho in Nihonbashi, but you will find many in Asakusa, some shaped like the gate's giant lantern.

Everyday Tokyo food

Ramen came to Japan from China. According to the Shinyokohama Ramen Museum, cited by GO TOKYO, a shop that opened in Asakusa in 1910 sparked Japan's first ramen boom. The traditional Tokyo bowl is soy sauce ramen, often listed on menus as chuka soba. Ramen is also where you can try styles from other parts of Japan, such as tonkotsu from Fukuoka and miso from Sapporo, without leaving the city.

In the evening, the izakaya, a casual bar that serves food, is the easiest place to try many small dishes in one meal. Yakitori restaurants grill chicken on skewers. Tonkatsu, a breaded and fried pork cutlet, and sukiyaki, thin slices of beef cooked in a sweet soy broth at the table, are two more dishes you will find across the city.

Where to find these foods in Tokyo

You do not have to cross the city for each dish. The big station areas, such as Tokyo Station, Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ueno, have many of the classics, such as sushi, tempura, soba and ramen, within a few minutes' walk, often in the underground shopping streets and on the restaurant floors of department stores. They are easy places to start on your first day, because many menus there have pictures or plastic models of the food.

For the neighbourhood dishes, go to the neighbourhood: Asakusa for snacks around the temple, Tsukishima for monjayaki, and Ryogoku for chanko nabe. For sushi, tempura and unagi at a small counter, book ahead; for ramen, soba and conveyor-belt sushi, you can usually walk in and queue.