The best meals in Tokyo are eaten standing up, at tiny counters lit by paper lanterns, with nowhere to be and nothing to read — just you, the cook, and the food.
Tokyo operates on a different temporal logic after midnight. The salarymen who packed the subway at 6pm are still at it — now at standing bars in the underground alleys of Shinjuku, loosened ties and red faces, ordering one more round. The ramen shops hit their second peak. The yakitori smoke thickens. And somewhere in the network of lanes below the elevated train tracks, someone is grilling chicken hearts over binchotan charcoal, and it smells extraordinary.
Omoide Yokocho — Memory Lane — is the most famous of Tokyo's alley dining districts, a narrow corridor of tiny yakitori stalls dating from the postwar era. Every guide to Tokyo includes it. It is still worth going. Arrive early enough (around 6pm) to watch the stalls come alive: the charcoal fires being lit, the skewers assembled, the lanterns glowing to life one by one as the sky darkens over the elevated Yamanote Line tracks.
The etiquette is simple: point at what looks good, hold up fingers for quantity, don't refuse the first offer of beer. The stalls are so small (most seat six) that you will inevitably end up in conversation with whoever is next to you. I once spent three hours at a four-seat yakitori stand with a retired architect and an Australian couple who'd got hopelessly lost looking for their hotel. It was one of the better evenings of my life.
The outer market at Tsukiji is the city's great culinary theatre at dawn. By 5am the tuna auction has finished (it is possible to book tours) and the outer market stalls are opening: sushi bars serving omakase to serious men in chef whites, fishmongers trimming slabs of otoro with casual expertise, tamagoyaki stalls with fresh rolled omelettes still steaming.
The best sushi breakfast I have ever eaten cost ¥4,200 and was served across a counter approximately 60cm wide in a place with eight seats, no English menu, and a three-month waiting list that I circumvented by showing up at 5:45am when they open for walk-ins.
Every neighbourhood in Tokyo has a superior ramen shop, and every Tokyoite will tell you theirs is the best. They are all correct. The tonkotsu of Fuunji in Shinjuku (the tsukemen here, with noodles served separately from the concentrated broth for dipping, may be the finest bowl I have had). The aged shoyu of Konjiki Hototogisu in Harajuku. The experimental wagyu-fat ramen of Ivan Ramen, a New Yorker who moved to Tokyo and out-ramened the Japanese.
The only rule: arrive early, stand in line without complaint, and if there is a ticket machine by the door, do not leave without reading it carefully.
Best districts for food wandering: Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza (for high-end), Koenji (for local), and Asakusa (for traditional).
A note on hours: Many of the best small places open for lunch (11:30–2pm) and dinner (6–10pm) only, and close when they sell out. Flexibility is the only strategy.
Tokyo taught me that a city's soul is most visible at 2am in the light of a paper lantern, eating something you cannot name, in a place you could not find again.
Wanderlust