The best street food dishes in Tokyo – and where to eat them 

Tokyo’s street food has a history stretching back to at least the early 18th century, when outdoor yatai (the name means a cart without a roof) served dishes such as tempura, soba buckwheat noodles and sushi.

Today, street food abounds throughout the Japanese capital – and there’s even a word for exploring an area on foot to try lots of different foods: tabearuki. Follow the local practice and eat the food in front of the place you bought it, as it’s considered impolite to eat while walking. The staff will take back any trash – which is useful, as there can be few rubbish bins on the streets. Read on for our recommendations of the best bites to enjoy while exploring the streets of Tokyo.

Takoyaki at Gindaco

The savoury batter of takoyaki is crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside, enveloping a chewy piece of octopus (tako means octopus, yaki to grill or cook). Gindaco  is a popular chain, and the original shop at Tsukiji market is the only branch that shaves smoky katsuobushi flakes in-house. These dried skipjack tuna shavings dance over the hot octopus balls. Takoyaki is garnished with mayonnaise and a sweet, thick gindako sauce.  

Tsukiji, site of the city’s wholesale fish market until 2018, offers many street food options including tamagoyaki omelette, Satsuma-age fried fish cakes, grilled wagyu beef on skewers, and onigiri rice balls.

Shio Daifuku at Mizuno 

Daifuku are sticky mochi dumplings stuffed with sweet red bean paste, and Mizuno  is the original shop for shio daifuku, which includes a small amount of salt (shio) to balance the sweetness and enhance the flavour. Mizuno is on the Sugamo shopping street  alongside some 200 other shops. As well as daifuku, try sembei rice crackers, yakitori grilled chicken skewers, taiyaki fish-shaped cakes filled with sweet red bean paste, and daigaku imo fried sweet potatoes in syrup.

Matcha soft serve at Cha no Kiminoen 

Matcha may be more familiar served as a hot drink whisked up in a large bowl, but Cha no Kiminoen , a tea merchant with a history going back 125 years, offers a rich matcha ice cream made with powdered green tea from the famous Uji district of Kyoto. 

The shop is in Ameya Yokocho, a boisterous open-air market underneath elevated train lines, with stalls selling fresh seafood, pantry staples, spices and candy. Other street food to seek out here includes menchi katsu (ground beef, breaded and deep-fried; see below), fresh fruit on a stick, and takoyaki.

Menchi katsu at Niku no Sato

Talking of menchi katsu, Niku no Sato’s offerings include minced top-rank A5 wagyu beef. The shop also offers other breaded and fried foods including horse mackerel, ham, squid and pork. Niku no Sato can be found in a charming pedestrian shopping arcade called Yanaka Ginza , which is also a great place to try sembei, grilled squid and scallops, and gelato in uniquely Japanese flavours such as sesame, muskmelon and kabocha squash. 

Ningyoyaki at Kimuraya

Ningyoyaki are small cakes filled with sweet red bean paste and grilled in moulds shaped like symbols of the historic Asakusa district – a five-tiered pagoda, for instance, or a paper lantern. Kimuraya  has been serving ningyoyaki for nearly 100 years. 

Asakusa Nakamise Dori, the pedestrian street that leads up to Tokyo’s oldest temple, Sensōji, is lined with shops offering small bites to pilgrims including sembei, melon pan sweet bread, agemanju fried sweet dumplings, and crispy sweet potato chips. 

Yakitori at Iseya

For yakitori, different parts of a chicken are cut into bite-size pieces, threaded on skewers and seasoned with a sweet soy sauce that caramelises as it roasts over a charcoal fire. Aficionados say part of the pleasure of yakitori comes from the texture of the different cuts of chicken. Iseya  has three yakitori shops near Kichijoji station.  

The area is famous for Inokashira Koen park and the Ghibli Museum. Satsuma-age, menchi katsu and taiyaki can also be found in the covered shopping arcade north of the station.