6 Best Restaurants in Asakusa, Tokyo

Daikokuya, in the center of Asakusa's historic district, is a point of pilgrimage for both locals and tourists. The specialty here is shrimp tempura, and the menu choices are simple—tendon is tempura shrimp served over rice, and the tempura meal includes rice, pickled vegetables, and miso soup. Famished diners can add additional pieces of tempura or side dishes such as sashimi for an additional fee, or opt for a multi-dish course. When the line of waiting customers outside is too long, head to the shop's annex (bekkan) just around the corner.

At the northern end of the izakaya-lined Hoppy Street, this hip Scandinavian-style café serves up sweet and savory Norwegian waffles along with coffee made using single-origin beans. In the evenings, there's craft beer and cocktails on the menu too.

On Kappabashi-dori, just north of the Kama-Asa knife store, this café has a very hipster feel thanks to its stark concrete walls and occasional in-store art exhibitions. The menu includes specialty coffees as well as organic matcha and ginger lemonade.

Here's a restaurant that's run like a formal ryotei (traditional Japanese restaurant focused on luxury) but has the feel of a rough-cut izakaya (Japanese pub). Neither inaccessible nor outrageously expensive, Tatsumiya is pleasantly cluttered with antique chests, braziers, clocks, lanterns, bowls, utensils, and craftwork, some of it for sale. The evening meal is in the kaiseki style, meaning multiple courses are served; tradition demands that the meal include something raw, something boiled, something vinegary, and something grilled. The kaiseki dinner is served only until 8:30, and you must reserve ahead for it. Tatsumiya also serves a light lunch, plus a variety of nabe (one-pot seafood and vegetable stews, prepared at your table) until 10. The pork nabe is the house specialty.

When it comes to preparation, this long-running unagi (freshwater eel) restaurant sticks to tradition, claiming to follow a 200-year-old recipe. For its ingredients, however, Maekawa takes a modern turn towards sustainability. Instead of using (rapidly dwindling) wild caught unagi, the restaurant uses only the highest quality domestically farmed unagi for its dishes. Choose from the una-ju (eel over rice served in a lacquered box), kabayaki (sweet grilled eel set meal), or shirayaki (plain grilled eel without sweet glaze). Maekawa offers a few small side dishes such as sashimi and dashi-tamago (Japanese rolled omelet) but like most classic unagi restaurants,  Maekawa does exactly one thing and does it well.

Originally a teahouse, Waentei-Kikko is now a cozy, country-style Japanese restaurant serving kaiseki-style set meals along with premium sake. What makes this place extra special is that the owner, Fukui Kodai, is a traditional Japanese Tsugaru-shamisen (string instrument) musician, who performs at scheduled times throughout the day. Narrow your field of vision, shut out the world outside, and you could be back in the waning days of Meiji-period Japan.