The most prominent feature of this restaurant is the calm, authority figure of chef and owner Hideki Ishikawa.His menu features some fantastic ingredient combinations, like monkfish liver, sansai, and wild boar finished with an decadent uni rice bowl.

Owner, Ivan Orkin, is an American living in Tokyo who, against all odds, opened a ramen shop in an area where non-Japanese chefs usually don’t exist. With training and experience in high-end restaurants, he transformed this street food into a sought-after delicacy.

It is a surprisingly homely looking place considering its reputation and the ramen is very good. Ramen is not the sort of meal you have for a long leisurely lunch – we are in and out in under 30 minutes.

The chef has a choice of 4000 ceramic bowls, cups and plates, valued at more than one million dollars, and his food, traditional in format, has creative twists throughout.

The restaurant is classic kaiseki-style. The food, under the charge of Shun Miyahara, is refined, elegant and seasonally driven. Using traditional kaiseki techniques, with some subtle, modern touches throughout.

Our third kaiseki-style restaurant, Jimbocho Den, is such a wonderful surprise; Run by a young husband-and-wife-team, the menu format is of traditional style but the dishes are both creative and modern, without losing sight of tradition.

It is a very intimate restaurant, seating only 15 patrons. We start with some raw baby Conger eel, tempura fukinoto (flowering shoots of butterbur) and grilled whelk – an impressive starter. And the sushi that followed was of a very high quality particularly for the price. The meal, with plenty of sake, came to about $160 per head.

The restaurant, located on the 38th floor of the hotel, seats just eight at the sushi counter and offers stunning views of the Tokyo skyline. The sushi is refined and very precise. Chef Yuji Imaizumi’s style is very theatrical, with complex movements and loud clapping of the hands involved in the production of each piece of sushi.

There is only counter seating in this restaurant. Unusually for yakitori style, this place is non-smoking and the room is elegant and understated.Chef Yoshiteru Ikegawa is a yakitori maestro and stands in front of his yakitori grill, for the whole night, with an intense focus on his face. He is also the lone griller, and it’s for this reason the maximum number of guests he will take in one group at the counter is three.