How we analyze restaurants

Every restaurant page opens with “Our analysis”: what we work out by setting the restaurant's facts beside those of the 6,995restaurants in this guide and beside its other sources. It follows fixed rules over the data described here. None of it is written by AI, none of it comes from diners' reviews, and it says nothing about the food. A sentence appears only when the facts behind it are there; where we are not sure, we say nothing.

Where the facts come from

Tabelog, Japan's largest restaurant guide: each restaurant's listing (prices, hours, seats, booking rules, awards) for all 6,995, and its courses for 2,810.
Ikyu (一休.com), a Japanese booking site: the courses it sells, priced with tax and service, for 3,614 restaurants.
Pocket Concierge, which takes bookings in English: 632 restaurants.
The MICHELIN Guide: the guide's own listing of 679 restaurants.
The restaurant's own website: its name as it writes it, its chef, its course prices or a Michelin distinction it states, for 1,651 restaurants.
OpenStreetMap for the walking directions from a station exit, and Wikidata for the places of stations and landmarks.

Our ranking

Lists follow our own score. It starts from the restaurant's Tabelog rating, adds a little for a sustained record of The Tabelog Award and Tabelog 100, and a little more when a visitor can book online in English or will find an English menu or English-speaking staff. The place we give a restaurant is its place in our list of its cuisine in its neighbourhood (or district) and in its city, the lists the sentence links to. In the analysis and in the “How it compares” table alike, a place is given only near the top of a list, within its first 30% or its first 10while that is no more than half the list, and never for a restaurant Tabelog has not rated yet (a new restaurant sits last in our order for that reason alone). Otherwise the table shows “—”, and the analysis says when Tabelog has no rating yet, with the month it opened.

Prices compared

We take the least expensive dinner course, and lunch course, that any source lists for the restaurant: its course pages on Tabelog, Pocket Concierge, Ikyu or its own website. A course counts for the meal it says or names it is for; at a restaurant whose published hours have no lunch sitting every course is a dinner course, and a lunch the hours do not show is not used. When a course that says neither costs less, the least expensive course for that meal is not known, and the page does not give one. A drinks pairing, a child's set, seats or à la carte booked ahead and a deposit are left out, as is a dinner course under half the restaurant's own Tabelog dinner budget (or under ¥5,000) and a lunch under a quarter of it (or under ¥3,000).

That price is set against the median of the same price at the 21 restaurants of the same city and cuisine nearest to it in our ranking, or as many as the list has (for an even number, the mean of the middle two, to the nearest ¥100); with fewer than 5there is no comparison. Sources list prices with or without tax and service, so a difference under 10% is “about the same”. A restaurant that lists no course with a price is placed by its Tabelog dinner budget among the high-end restaurants of its city and of its cuisine there.

Booking from abroad

Online in English: it can be booked through a service in English (TableCheck, OMAKASE, Pocket Concierge, Tableall, OpenTable, SevenRooms, AutoReserve) that its website links to, through Tabelog's English pages, or through the service it names for guests from overseas.
Online in Japanese only: through Ikyu or a booking form in Japanese.
By phone only. A hotel concierge can call for you: it is the usual way visitors book these restaurants, and many concierges book weeks ahead.
No public phone or online booking: this usually means the seats go to regulars and their guests; a concierge at a luxury hotel is the best chance of a table.
Limited: the restaurant says it does not take bookings from overseas, or asks that someone who speaks Japanese books or comes along.

Each grade comes with how many restaurants of the same cuisine in the city can be booked online in English. The panel “For international visitors” also judges the languages of the menu and staff, for readers of English, Chinese or Korean. “Not listed” there means the restaurant has not said, not that it has none. “Can't get a table?” suggests restaurants of the same cuisine nearby at a like price that take bookings online and say nothing against guests from abroad.

Awards across the years

The Tabelog Award is chosen each year from the most highly rated restaurants on Tabelog. A run counts the years in a row up to the latest Award, and we count how many restaurants of the same city in this guide share it. Tabelog 100 selections are listed by year. For the MICHELIN Guide we use the guide's own listing, and the count is of restaurants in the same city in this guide with the same distinction. Awards change every year; the guide itself is the authority. What a restaurant's website says about a star is shown as its own statement.

What its facts suit

“Good for” names at most four situations, each from a fact: counter seating and private rooms (Tabelog), a lunch at least 10% below dinner, Sunday opening (with how many restaurants of the cuisine nearby say they open then), a closing time of 23:00 or later, children welcome (the policy the restaurant publishes on Tabelog), a celebration on request, and dining alone (recommended for one by Tabelog's users).

Prices that sources agree on

When two sources list a course at the same price for the same meal, or one lists it 10% higher with the service charge included (Ikyu always does; Pocket Concierge says when it does), the page names both, using each course in one match only. It shows where the same course is sold and what the price includes.

“How it compares”

The table puts the restaurant among up to five others of the same cuisine with a Tabelog dinner budget within half as much again either way: in its neighbourhood, else its district, else its city, the ones nearest to it in our ranking. A price marked “budget” is the Tabelog budget, shown where no course with a price is listed.

“Our analysis” on a list

Each list page opens with what its whole list adds up to, not only the 40 restaurants shown: how many publish a dinner (and a lunch) course and the median of the least expensive one at each, by the same rules as on a restaurant page; that median beside the one of the list it narrows (its city and cuisine without the slice, the city without the neighbourhood, Japan without the city), where the gap is under 10% “about the same”; on the “under ¥20,000” lists, how many have a course under ¥20,000 (the list is Tabelog’s dinner budget, the course is what the restaurant charges); and how the restaurants can be booked from abroad, graded as on their pages. A median is given only from five prices up. The table of booking services counts a restaurant once for each service it takes bookings through.

Notes that apply to every page

Dollar figures use ¥150 to the US dollar and are a rough guide only.
Price bands are Tabelog’s dinner and lunch budgets; drinks, the 10% consumption tax and any service charge can add to the bill.
Prices, hours and policies change, and hours change around holidays and for private events: confirm them with the restaurant when you book.
Walking times in lists and under “Nearby” are estimates from straight-line distance; the walking directions follow the streets.
Photos of dishes show what the restaurant serves; not every dish is on every course.

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