Product Description

The Michelin Guides offer a selection of the best hotels and restaurants in every price category. These establishments are chosen by a team of full-time inspectors with a professional background in the industry. They cover every corner of the countries, visiting new establishments as well as testing the quality and consistency of the hotels and restaurants already listed in the guide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #707699 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 411 pages

Customer Reviews

The little red book for central Tokyo - a decent start
The Michelin guides first edition of the central Tokyo area introduces Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Italien kitchen and 2 Steakhouses.

Generally speaking for a first edition it attempts to make a decent choice of restaurants and its culture mixes.

The excellent descriptions and carefully chosen words make for an inviting impression and an enjoyable read. The books format should fit in most bags but is slightly to big for your pockets.

Most resturants lunch prices start at $25 but you will be surprised to find some gems for less within central Tokyo.

Michelin guides are known for its quality of the chosen restaurants and in this regard the guide doesnt fall short.

I really want to give the guide 5 stars but that would spoil the fun for a second edition. ;-)
As a "local" living in Tokyo I would wish for more "features" in the second edition.

- Japan has a wide variety of "local" kitchens, Okinawa, Saporro etc.
rather than introducing non asian kitchens I believe more local variety should be present in the guide
- Can we add categories for vegetarians, vegans, organic food, soya based food, health conscius cooking etc.
- I was surprised to see only one Tofu based restaurant. I would expect more restaurants and definitely an introduction to Yuba, fried tofu based products etc.
- Please write next to the photos what it is and which course or menu it belonged to
- How about a list of top 20 restaurants which "tourists" usually dont find themselves.
- Why not adding at the end a list of popular local drinks (beer, ricewine, etc) ?


Summary:

Let my comments not fool you, the Michelin guide historically introduces good places where to go and is worth its money.

Keep in mind that almost non of the introduced places are where the locals go regularly for the everyday lunch. So you should be able to expect "a bit more" when going to any of the introduced places, after all thats what you pay for ;-)

Great as always, but no Bib Gourmands!
Michelin guides are usually quite excellent. This one does not disappoint, with its helpful classifications by star, cuisine, neighborhood, as well as easy-to-read maps of an otherwise maze-like Tokyo, and last but not least, it's surprisingly good bind quality and affordable price.

Normally, I appreciate being able to browse through the hundreds of choices from 1-3 stars, "Bib Gourmand" (value picks), and "Knife & Fork only" (no-star) picks. That gives me the option of mixing in a few star-based restaurants with a handful of more practical choices for my budget.

However!! ...that's where this 2008 Tokyo guide throws me off a bit... In this first edition, all 150 restaurants have stars, which, admittedly, is something to be celebrated -- but instead of having 400+ non-star/value choices to complement the star-rated restaurants, you have, er... none!

This isn't a deal-breaker, but is something one should be very aware of if you're like me and mostly looking for the value picks. Those of you with deeper wallets are unaffected.

Some super-traditional, omakase-only (chef's selection) Japanese restaurants, including some listed, supposedly (according to magazine interviews and TV shows) do not take reservations in English, nor will they serve non-Japanese speaking tourists without a translator -- I found it interesting that the book made no mention of that. Just to clarify (not justify), the restaurant's reasoning is not based on racism, but that they feel they can't take that much money and claim to serve your needs if they cannot communicate with you and understand your wants.

In any event, I'm sure Michelin will be looking to add more non-star/value restaurants in their second edition, at which point, this will be a solid 5-star pick for someone looking for an assortment of great places to dine/stay in Tokyo.

Useful for the Ignorant Traveler
If you want to eat well in Japan and don't have much knowledge about where to go, this guide provides a very useful starting point. While my assessments of the food quality didn't agree with some of those in the Guide, the descriptions of the restaurants and the little location maps were spot-on. [...] I recommend this for the foodie tourist.