Visit Hotel’s to Eat Joyful Breakfasts Delivered by a Restaurant Team Led by a One-Star Chef

If asked to name a classic Japanese breakfast, most people would probably first think of rice, miso soup, and grilled fish. One restaurant offers this classic Japanese breakfast for a special occasion, with a meticulous focus on all ingredients and cooking methods.

For this article, we visited that restaurant, called Hotel’s, which was designed around the idea of a fictional hotel restaurant and which opened in Tokyo’s Kita-Aoyama area in 2021.

The luxury of starting the day in an urban oasis

“Hotel’s emerged from the desire of our owner, Chef Toba, to have people indulge themselves for a special time, like that of a hotel restaurant, at any time of day. Just like real hotels, we offer different menus at different times of day, starting with breakfast, then lunch and dinner.”

This is how Murata Yusuke, Hotel’s PR representative, describes the restaurant.

Chef Toba Shusaku, the owner and chef of Hotel’s, also runs Sio, a restaurant in Yoyogi-Uehara that has earned a star from the Michelin Guide Tokyo for four straight years since 2020. Chef Toba has an unusual background for a chef, being a former J-League soccer trainee and even working as an elementary school teacher. The unique style of his restaurants that defies stereotypes has garnered wide attention, and all have become so popular that getting a reservation is a near impossibility. Hotel’s is the sixth restaurant he has opened.

A low-key sign marks the entrance

Hotel’s is located in a corner of the Nono Aoyama shopping facility, a redevelopment project on the site of a former municipal housing complex in the heart of Tokyo that teems with nature throughout the four seasons

Although just a five-minute walk from Omotesando Station, Hotel’s is located in a corner of a large site with an abundance of greenery. The restaurant opens at 9 a.m., when the air is still coolish and invigorating. On weekends, the adjacent park is bustling with families. But on weekday mornings, the relaxed and peaceful atmosphere hints that a special day is about to begin.

On entering the restaurant, you find a bright space filled with soft morning sunlight. The interior, centered on an open kitchen, has been carefully designed and curated to create the comfortable aura of an upscale hotel. This includes everything from the chairs and tables that let you enjoy your meal at a leisurely pace, to the tableware and staff uniforms, and even the selection of music.

Table seating near the entrance. The chairs are from Maruni Wood Industry and were chosen for their comfort.

The breakfast course, highlighted by thick, juicy grilled salmon with crispy skin, began with the idea of serving dinner for breakfast

The salmon course, available only during breakfast hours, is one of the most popular items at Hotel’s, and many customers keep coming back for it.

“This course was originally a popular ‘dinner for breakfast’ item at Sio in Yoyogi-Uehara. We came up with this course so people could enjoy a more substantial morning meal during the times when we were not allowed to operate in the evenings because of COVID-19 restrictions.”

The salmon course is the dream breakfast, in which each item is fastidiously prepared

The course features a thick silver salmon fillet grilled in salt. It also includes freshly cooked rice with free refills; white miso soup with pork; ryukyu — a local Oita dish consisting of fish marinated in a soy-based sauce; nukazuke [pickles made in a bed of fermented rice bran] seasoned with aromatic yuzu citrus and Sichuan pepper; freshly scalded plump shirasu whitebait; boiled spinach in bonito-flavored soy sauce seasoned with ume plum; and a hearty hijiki seaweed stew. The portions are large enough to satisfy even the hungriest of men. Indeed, many businessmen stop in for this course on their way to work.

Extra care is taken so the skin of the thick juicy salmon is cooked to crispy perfection. It is served with grated daikon radish and ponzu sauce flavored with ayu fish sauce and white balsamic vinegar.

The pork miso soup has a broth made with kelp at 60°C and bonito flakes at 85°C. The miso used is white miso that has been produced in Kyoto for over 100 years. Chef Toba settled on white miso to balance out the saltiness of the other ingredients.

Rice refills are free, and if you order an egg on the side, you can make egg-on-rice. Given how delicious the rice is, it’s understandable why some customers have as many as six refills.

The meticulously prepared seasonings are stars in their own right: furikake rice toppings made in house from leftover grilled salmon; G7 (a blend of the seven finest spices) from Yamatsu Tsujita, a long-established Osaka shop that deals in Japanese chili peppers that Chef Toba is crazy about; and aromatic oyster soy sauce

Yokomizo Chikako, a member of the serving team, informs us: “What sets our grilled salmon apart is the crispiness of the skin. When serving it, we tell our customers to break apart the salmon skin with their chopsticks before trying anything else.”

When we followed her instructions and broke apart the skin with our chopsticks, we were astounded by how unimaginably crispy it was.

“The secret to the crispiness is how we grill the fish. First, we poke small holes in the skin so that it won’t shrink when grilled, and then we let it dry. We give the skin time to dry until just before it is grilled, while ensuring the meat of the fish itself doesn’t dry out. When it has dried to the point where you can see how thin the skin is, we char it in a frypan with the skin side down, and then cook it slowly in an oven .”

Our aim is to raise the baseline of happiness through great-tasting food

Yokomizo freely shared the secrets of the restaurant’s salmon grilling technique, its biggest point of pride. The reason, Murata tells us, is that Chef Toba, the owner, wants to share his great-tasting meals with as many people as possible.

“We post our recipes on YouTube, Instagram, and other socials. There’s no copyright on cooking, so we want to keep on sharing and in doing so raise the baseline of happiness. In the same vein, we made Hotel’s slightly more casual to lower the perceived entry barrier of a restaurant, so people feel more comfortable spending a delightful time here.”

Recently, the restaurant has been holding irregular events called Tabi — meaning travel, where Chef Toba and his staff travel around Japan to find delicious food and then offer a full-course dinner that respects while reinterpreting the local dishes and ingredients they encounter on their trips.

At Hotel’s, from the interior design to the ingredients, seasonings, cooking methods, and menu composition, you can experience the uncompromising pursuit of food and taste by Chef Toba and his team. We will end with a brief explanation of the carefully blended tea served with the salmon breakfast course.

“The tea we serve is a blend of seven types of tea, with a green tea and roasted green tea base to which is added basil, black pepper, yuzu citrus, barley, and tangerine peel. If you drink it before the meal, you will enjoy the gentle aroma of basil. During the meal, the tea takes on a flavor that reminds you of salmon chazuke [tea or broth over rice]. And after the meal, it will leave you feeling refreshed and invigorated. There is so much attention to detail that goes into blending these teas and so much to describe to customers that we talk for ages. (laughs)”

This original tea is blended specifically for the salmon breakfast course

Hotel’s is a place where you can take your time and enjoy a conversation with the staff across the open kitchen. This urban oasis where you can eat a classic Japanese breakfast course serves up surprises and excitement along with superb hospitality.