The noren is the first promise. A blue curtain with the 青山 crest hangs over the door on the M2 floor of the Hanayuki building, and past it the bamboo facade gives way to a single long wooden counter. Lantern light, the smell of warm rice, the quiet of a room that greets the day in two calm seatings.
The fish sets the day's menu. Seafood arrives by air from Tokyo's Toyosu Market, and the head chef — a Japanese itamae with some forty years of experience — reads the morning's catch and builds each course around it: sea bream, tuna, oyster, uni, shrimp, crab, the full Edomae register.
The room welcomes business and family alike. Ten private rooms take group bookings up to thirty guests, while the counter keeps its by-appointment calm. However you come, the meal moves the same way: one piece at a time, faced head-on, finished in front of you.