Where to Eat in Ginza

This is an early list from Supper Social, opening for diner votes, and positions cannot be bought. Know two of these? Pick one.

See the full list: Restaurants in Ginza

Ginza is nearly all counters, and nearly all of them small. These are the counter seats worth booking: what each one gets you, who is standing on the other side of it, and how it takes a booking. The rooms are in basements and on ninth floors, behind doors you would walk straight past, and the person who makes your dinner is usually close enough to hand it over personally. That is the whole point. Choose by what you want to watch being made.

Three sushi counters, three calling cards

GINZA KYUBEY was opened by Hisaji Imada in Ginza's eighth chome more than ninety years ago, and the house is credited with creating gunkan maki, the nori collared boat that keeps sea urchin and salmon roe on their rice. The Imada family still runs it, with the main restaurant and its annex at the same Ginza address. Sushi with a long memory, and a piece of the city's history you can eat.

Sushi Arai is where most people go for tuna. Yuichi Arai adjusts the cut, and the vinegar in the rice, to suit the fish in front of him. The main counter seats seven and leans on regulars, while a second counter in the basement of the same building, run by Yuki Usui, is easier to book. Take the second counter if it is offered. Nobody will think less of you.

Sushi Yoshitake is nine floors up in Brown Place, and Masahiro Yoshitake's famous dish uses abalone twice: steamed, then dipped in a sauce made from its own liver, after which the leftover sauce is folded through a little sushi rice so nothing goes to waste. The rest of the omakase is exacting, and the following is close to devotional.

Watching the fryer and the hassun

Tempura Kondo belongs to Fumio Kondo, who treats tempura as a way of steaming each ingredient inside its batter, and gives vegetables as much attention as seafood. The style is Edo tempura, the frying happens at close quarters across a pair of counters on the ninth floor, and the Michelin Guide gives it two stars. Here the fryer is the main event.

Ginza Shinohara is a basement counter run by a chef born in Shiga and trained in Kyoto. The hassun platter arrives as the seasonal set piece, and a hot pot rounds the meal off. Two Michelin stars back the cooking. Kaiseki with a Kansai accent, in a small room where every eye ends up on the counter, including yours.

Charcoal and broth

Bird Land Ginza is Toshihiro Wada's basement, a few steps from Ginza's main crossing, where Okukuji shamo chicken goes over charcoal. The yakitori sets bring liver pâté, the prized chicken oyster and pepper grilled cuts, then an oyakodon of chicken and egg closes things out. The Michelin Guide lists it. Yakitori with polish, and the chicken is the star.

Ginza Hachigou is ramen from Yasushi Matsumura, who came to it from a French kitchen. The soup is drawn like a consommé from Nagoya Cochin, duck, scallop, shiitake, kelp and ham, then seasoned with salt rather than tare, and the wontons hide foie gras and truffle. Six seats and a Bib Gourmand. It sits on our $$ tier, a step below everything else in this guide.

The wagyu outlier

GINZA KOSO deals only in Kuroge wagyu, eight floors up in the Ginza 888 Building. Courses move between teppanyaki steak, raw and seared wagyu nigiri, grilled cuts and shabu shabu, so a single breed turns up several ways in one sitting. For diners who want to see what the beef can do, and are fine with the beef showing off.

Two Ginza counters, one tap. Which would you go back to? Vote

Booking a Ginza counter: what to check

Small rooms mean strict rules. This is what each house says on its own website, checked on 10 October 2026. Where we could not confirm a booking route, we say so.

• Sushi Arai: its site sends bookings to the Omakase reservation platform. The second counter is the easier seat.
• Sushi Yoshitake: its site also books through Omakase.
• Tempura Kondo: a Japanese booking form or a phone line that works in Japanese only; overseas guests book through My Concierge Japan, the restaurant's official desk for international reservations, with forms in English, Chinese and Korean.
• Bird Land Ginza: online booking from its site, with My Concierge Japan for overseas guests. It suggests calling if you are booking for one, or for three or more, and charges a fee for cancellations on the day.
• GINZA KOSO: cancellations on the day are charged in full, and nobody under 20 is admitted.
• GINZA KYUBEY: bookings go through the reservation section of its own site.
• Ginza Shinohara and Ginza Hachigou: we could not confirm a booking route from an official source, so we are not guessing.

Before you commit anywhere, check three things: the cancellation policy, whether you are getting the counter or a table, and the start time on your confirmation. Some counters seat everyone together, so the start time is not a suggestion.

How this list works

It is an early editorial list, built from our own research, and it will be reordered as diner votes come in. Positions cannot be bought. More on how the list works.

Keep going: the Ginza area page, Japanese restaurants in Ginza, the Ginza guide, Japanese in Ginza, Tokyo Restaurants Worth Knowing, across town in Where to Eat in Roppongi and Azabu, and the rest of Tokyo.

This is an early list, opening for diner votes, and positions cannot be bought. Pick between two and help set the order: vote here.