Tokyo Drift

The Apollo, Fratelli Paradiso, now Longrain – Japan has become hot property for Australian restaurants, writes Neha Kale.

- Neha Kale

Sam Christie remembers the first time he was struck by the density of the Tokyo food scene. The restaurateur and co-founder of Longrain was at the Tsukiji Fish Market when the scope of Japan’s culinary culture really hit him.

“I couldn’t get over the amount of seafood, the hundreds of species of fish – there’s nothing like eating raw prawns for breakfast,” he says. “Just walking down the street is mind-boggling.”

Tokyo, where Michelin-starred ramen is ordered via vending machine and nondescript buildings house floor upon floor of ultra-niche eateries, is perhaps the world’s greatest food city. But given its hundreds of thousands of restaurants, the language barrier and its famously impenetrable web of customs, it can be daunting for foreign restaurateurs.

Not that it’s stopping Christie. Next month he opens an outpost of Longrain on the 39th floor of the Yebisu Garden Place Tower in Ebisu (an upscale neighbourhood known for its tachinomiya standing bars) in partnership with Transit, the Japanese hospitality group that brought Bill Granger’s Bills to Omotesando in 2008.