What to eat in Tokyo, and how to order it

Tokyo's own style — fish from the bay, cured, marinated or aged rather than merely raw, on rice seasoned with red vinegar, served one piece at a time at a counter. The word to know is omakase, "leave it to you": the chef decides the order and the pace. Lunch is the affordable way in; a standing sushi bar at Ameyoko or a conveyor-belt place is the cheap and honest one.

¥¥¥ · Ginza, Nihonbashi, Tsukiji & Toyosu, Ueno & Yanaka

The formal course meal that grew out of the tea ceremony: a dozen small dishes in fixed order — an appetiser, sashimi, a clear soup, a grilled course, a simmered course, rice and pickles, a sweet — each on a different plate, each built on the month. Served in ryotei's private rooms and the top-floor restaurants of the great hotels; three hours; no choices.

¥¥¥¥ · Kagurazaka, Ginza, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station

The Meiji-era invention of Western dishes for Japanese tastes: omurice (an omelette over ketchup rice), hayashi rice, croquettes, hamburger steak with demi-glace, Napolitan spaghetti in ketchup. Ginza and Nihonbashi's yoshoku houses have been serving them since the 1890s in rooms with white tablecloths; it is comfort food with a history, and children love it.

¥¥ · Ginza, Nihonbashi, Asakusa

Buckwheat noodles, the Edo townsman's fast food and the dish Tokyo is proudest of: served cold on a bamboo tray with a dipping sauce (mori or seiro), or hot in broth. Kanda's Yabu and Matsuya and Azabu-Juban's Sarashina Horii are the old houses; the white sarashina style is the refined one, the dark inaka style the rustic. At the end the server brings sobayu, the cooking water, to pour into your remaining sauce and drink.

¥ · Akihabara & Kanda, Roppongi & Azabu, Kagurazaka

Fried one piece at a time in front of you and placed on paper the moment it leaves the oil — prawn, whiting, a shiso leaf, a scallop, an ear of sweetcorn — with salt or a light dipping broth. Tokyo tempura uses sesame oil and a thin, almost transparent batter. Lunch at a serious counter is a fraction of dinner.

¥¥¥ · Ginza, Nihonbashi, Asakusa

Freshwater eel, split, steamed, then grilled over charcoal with a sweet soy glaze and laid on rice in a lacquer box (unaju). The Tokyo way steams before grilling, so the flesh is soft; the old houses in Nihonbashi, Asakusa and Kanda have been at it since the Edo period and charge accordingly. Sea eel (anago) is the gentler cousin, sold at sushi and tempura counters.

¥¥¥ · Nihonbashi, Asakusa, Akihabara & Kanda

Tokyo's ramen is shoyu — soy-seasoned chicken and pork broth with thin curly noodles — but the city has every regional style and the new wave of shops using dashi, salt or truffle. Order from the ticket machine at the door, hand the ticket over, eat in ten minutes; the best shops have queues and turn a counter of ten every quarter hour. Ginza has a Michelin-starred bowl; Ebisu and Shibuya have the cult shops.

¥ · Shibuya, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Ginza, Shinjuku

Chicken, every part of it, on skewers over binchotan charcoal, seasoned with salt (shio) or glaze (tare): thigh, skin, meatball, liver, the tail, the cartilage. The alleys under the tracks — Yurakucho, Omoide Yokocho — serve it in the smoke for a few hundred yen a skewer; the counters in Ebisu and Nakameguro turn it into a twelve-course tasting. Order two skewers at a time and keep going.

¥¥ · Shinjuku, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Shibuya

The low city's own griddle dish — a runny batter with cabbage, seafood and whatever else, cooked on the hotplate at your table and eaten straight off it with a small metal spatula. Tsukishima, one station from Ginza, has a whole street of monja restaurants. It is messy, cheap, communal and the most Tokyo of foods that visitors never hear about.

¥ · Tsukiji & Toyosu, Ginza

The sumo wrestlers' hotpot — chicken, fish, tofu and vegetables in a light broth, served in a pot for two or more at restaurants in Ryogoku run by retired wrestlers, often with a small ring in the dining room. Filling, healthy, and the natural dinner after a day at the Kokugikan.

¥¥ · Ryogoku & Kiyosumi

A thick pork cutlet in panko crumbs, fried slowly, cut into strips, with a mountain of shredded cabbage, miso soup and rice, all refillable. Tokyo invented it in the Meiji era and does it best; the good houses age the pork and fry in lard. Order "rosu" for the fatty loin, "hire" for the lean fillet.

¥¥ · Ueno & Yanaka, Ginza, Shinjuku

The rice ball in nori is Japan's sandwich, and the convenience store's version — salmon, pickled plum, tuna mayonnaise, in a wrapper that keeps the seaweed crisp — is a fair breakfast for a coin. The conbini itself is one of Japan's quiet wonders: hot coffee, egg sandwiches, clean lavatories, ATMs that take foreign cards, and a staff who will heat your bento. Specialist onigiri shops in Asakusa and Otsuka make the artisanal version to order.

¥ · Asakusa, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Shibuya

The boxed meal is a design object: rice, a main, three or four sides, pickles, each in its compartment, balanced in colour and taste and eaten at room temperature. Department stores and station concourses sell hundreds of kinds; Tokyo Station's ekiben hall gathers the regional ones from every line out of the city. The one to buy before a shinkansen is the one from the region you are going to.

¥ · Marunouchi & Tokyo Station, Shinjuku, Nihonbashi

The sweets made to go with tea: nerikiri shaped into the season's flower, yokan (bean jelly), daifuku (rice cake around bean paste), dorayaki (pancake sandwich), and the shaved-ice of summer. Old shops in Nihonbashi, Ginza and the low city sell them by the piece; the department-store basements gather the best from Kyoto and Kanazawa. Eat with bitter matcha, sweet first.

¥ · Nihonbashi, Ginza, Ueno & Yanaka, Shinjuku

From June to September, shaved ice as fine as snow, piled high and dressed with syrups made from fresh fruit, matcha, or condensed milk — the old tea shops of Asakusa and Yanaka make it with block ice cut by hand, and the new-wave shops in Aoyama queue for two hours. It melts in ten minutes; eat it at once.

¥ · Asakusa, Ueno & Yanaka, Aoyama & Omotesando

The old-style Japanese coffee house: dark wood, a siphon or a hand-drip made one cup at a time, a thick slice of toast with butter, a "morning set" until eleven, and no pressure to leave. Kanda, Asakusa and Ginza have the survivors from the 1950s and 60s; some are jazz kissa where talking is discouraged. It is where Tokyo goes to read.

¥ · Akihabara & Kanda, Asakusa, Ginza, Shibuya

The department-store food basement: a hundred counters of bento, sushi, wagashi, French pastry, tea, sake and fruit, each from a named maker, each sample offered with a toothpick. Isetan Shinjuku's is the best; Mitsukoshi Nihonbashi's the grandest. Assemble a lunch and eat it in the nearest garden — that is what it is for.

¥¥ · Shinjuku, Nihonbashi, Ginza, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station

The Japanese pub-restaurant: a long menu of small plates — sashimi, grilled fish, fried chicken, pickles, tofu — ordered a few at a time over beer, sake or highballs. A small appetiser (otoshi) arrives unasked and is charged; that is normal. The alley counters are the cheap version; the "modern izakaya" of Ebisu and Nakameguro serve natural wine with the same plates.

¥¥ · Shinjuku, Shibuya, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu, Marunouchi & Tokyo Station

Tokyo took to third-wave coffee with the seriousness it gives to everything: single-origin beans roasted on the premises, a pour-over made with a timer, and a barista who will tell you about the farm. Kiyosumi-Shirakawa is the district that started it; Tomigaya, Nakameguro and Kuramae have the second generation. A cup is an event, not a habit.

¥ · Ryogoku & Kiyosumi, Shibuya, Nakameguro, Daikanyama & Ebisu

Rice, water, koji and yeast; brewed like beer, drunk like wine, at any temperature from ice to hot. The label words to know: junmai (rice only), ginjo and daiginjo (more polished, more fragrant), nama (unpasteurised, drink fresh), nigori (cloudy). Ask for the brewer's region and the season — sake has vintages and moods. Cold and dry with sushi; warm and rich with a hotpot.

¥¥ · Nihonbashi, Shinjuku, Kagurazaka