Shokuzen Abe

※ This restaurant requires guests to meet a minimum threshold of Japanese ability. Please ensure some fluency in Japanese before making a reservation. Enter the doors of this Kyoto-style Ginza restaurant and you’ll be greeted with the scent of grilling meat and vegetables, wafting out of the traditional charcoal-fired oven. This oven is the secret to Shokuzen Abe’s incredible appetizers and baked fish. The chef here mastered Kyoto cuisine at a famous Tokyo restaurant before deciding to go it alone. Now he provides some of the best Kyoto-vegetable spreads in the capital, alongside a range of meat and fish delicacies too. His rice is perhaps the greatest speciality of the restaurant: cooked in a traditional “kudo” furnace oven and flavored with sardines. To get an authentic taste of Kyoto cuisine without the inconvenience of a bullet train trip, Shokuzen Abe is one of the best places in Tokyo.