Best cheap eats in Tokyo

Quality seafood at a reasonable price is hard to come by, making Tajima’s lunch offerings so hard to beat. Located just outside Nakano-Sakaue Station, this serene sushi restaurant offers three seafood donburi rice bowls for ¥1,000 each: a kaisendon topped with fresh seafood, a zeitakudon topped with mixed minced seafood (tuna, octopus, salmon roe, whitebait, etc), and a bakudandon with the aforementioned minced seafood, natto (fermented soybeans) and a raw egg. Prefer sushi? You can also get a seven-piece nigiri set with maki rolls and tamagoyaki (egg roll) for just ¥1,000. All the lunch dishes come with miso soup plus a side dish.

Unagi (grilled freshwater eel) is considered a delicacy, but this low-key and inviting eatery offers this luxurious dish as a quick and affordable meal. An unadon, grilled eel glazed with a sweet-savoury sauce over white rice, costs as little as ¥590. For ¥880, you can get hitsumabushi, a speciality from Aichi prefecture which resembles the unaju (unagi served in a rectangular lacquer box) and should be enjoyed in two ways. First, you eat the eel and rice with a dash of wasabi. Then mix things up by pouring dashi broth into your rice and eat the unagi as you would ochazuke (a homely dish of broth and rice).

Specialising in himono fish dishes for under ¥1,000 a set, this favourite haunt of Ginza office workers serves up authentic teishoku (set meal) at lunch. The term ‘himono’ refers to the process of partially drying fish so that the flesh becomes sweeter and more succulent, a curing method that dates back to the Nara period (710-794) – himono was once offered to the royal court as a gift. Most of the dishes here, such as mackerel with crispy skin and salmon, are grilled over charcoal. Sets come with rice, grated daikon radish, miso soup and sesame spinach.

It’s rare to find a cheap and cheerful tempura course in Tokyo, so forgive us for slightly stretching our budget to include this Nihonbashi fritter fixer. The tempura here is exemplary. The batter is light and airy, a thin coat of addictive crispness. The ingredients, meanwhile, are the star – perfectly cooked while still maintaining their natural juices and flavours. It’s how good tempura should be: textural, flavourful and easy on the wallet. For just ¥1,190, you’ll get nine feather-light items including shrimp, whiting, squid, maitake mushroom plus an oozy egg served straight from the fryer, along with rice and clam miso soup.

At this unassuming Shibuya Stream restaurant, a branch of the original in Ebisu founded 40 years ago, you can expect homely dishes at an affordable price. Classic Japanese fare such as salt-grilled mackerel, pork and aubergine stir-fry, and deep-fried chicken karaage are served as set meals, accompanied by rice (cooked in a claypot, no less), miso soup, pickles and a side dish. Prices start from just ¥900 and very rarely exceed ¥1,000 – save for the seasonal specials, which are always worth considering.

Onigiri is the perfect one-handed food – soft, steamy rice with a savoury filling wrapped in crisp nori seaweed. It’s cheap and quick, known more for its sustenance than flavour, and easily found at many takeaway and convenience stores. But at Onigiri Bongo, the humble dish is elevated into a thoughtful, proper meal. The menu features more than 50 fillings, including classics like ume plum and salmon flakes as well as unconventional combos like bacon and cheese, and curry and beef. The onigiri start at ¥300 while lunch sets go from ¥600 and come with two rice balls of your choice plus unlimited tofu miso soup...

The shopping enclave of Ginza is the last place you’d expect to find a Bib Gourmand meal for just ¥1,000. But on weekday lunchtimes, this anomaly of a restaurant, tucked away in a narrow basement in a back alley, serves excellent tendon (tempura on rice) for just that. It’s a steal, considering dinner here will set you back at least ¥5,500.

This place has serious pedigree: the proprietor Chef Abe had previously worked at Nadaman, one of the city’s top Japanese restaurants, for 30 years. Prawn tempura is a speciality...

Visit this charming multi-purpose space at weekends for the bargain lunch set, where two onigiri, a hearty soup and pickles is just ¥650. Omusubi Stand Andon comprises four floors: the first houses the onigiri stand, while the second offers a library and eat-in space.

Andon uses premium rice from Akita prefecture while the fillings come in tried-and-tested flavours such as ume plum, salmon, minced meat in miso, chirimen sansho (dried whitebait mixed with sansho pepper) and iburigakko cheese (smoked takuan pickles with cream cheese), to name just a few...

At this convenient Roppongi eatery you’ll find one of the best pork tonkatsu in central Tokyo. The lunch deal, available daily until 4.30pm, is exceptional – you get a perfectly fried piece of pork loin, coated with crisp, golden panko, and served with bottomless rice and shredded cabbage, plus miso soup and pickles, for just ¥1,200.

If you want to splurge, premium pork options costing close to ¥3,000 are available. But the standard pork is no slouch: depending on the day, you could get an Okinawan meat raised on herbs or a breed from Chiba that feeds on sweet potatoes.

On days when you’re craving something substantial and a little greasy – don’t worry, we’ve all had them – it’s hard to beat katsu over rice. Pork fillet crumbed with panko and deep-fried, and then drizzled with a generous amount of sweet, mildly tangy katsu sauce, is irresistibly moreish. While most katsu joints offer pork and not much else, here you can pick your own katsudon toppings from classic pork katsu to shrimp and even assorted vegetables like aubergine, shiitake mushroom and pumpkin. A four-piece pork katsudon or a two-piece katsudon with breaded veggies are ¥880 each.

Visit Korean barbecue restaurant Hanuri for lunch and you can experience a GIY (grill-it-yourself) beef meal for as little as ¥979. You’ll get 110g of beef – either short ribs, skirt steak, shoulder or tongue. Included in the price is an all-you-can-eat self-service salad bar, where you can stock up on the likes of pickled daikon, shaved cabbage, miso soup, steamed rice, tea and more. Hanuri has several locations in Tokyo but we favour the Shinbashi one for its sweeping 8th-floor views. In the evenings, plates of meat start at around ¥980 per person, and salads cost ¥650.

This hidden gem of a restaurant looks like it’s stuck in the ’70s, from its location in a forgotten back-alley building and old-school interior to its surprisingly low prices. It specialises in cutlets – meat and vegetables breaded with panko and deep-fried.

The popular set meal, which comes with a chicken cutlet, ham cutlet and croquette plus rice, miso soup and shredded cabbage, is only ¥700 – it’s arguably the best-value meal in central Shibuya...

While yakiniku (grilled meat) restaurants mostly cater to group dining, the multi-branch Yakiniku Like chain offers solo-diner grills – with great success. Today, it has restaurants across Tokyo, including Shinbashi, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Akihabara and Ueno; most outlets also offer a few tables for two.

The menu is highly customisable: choose your cut of beef (or that one pork option) and the quantity, with prices starting from just ¥220 per 50g. Add another ¥200 for a bowl of rice (refillable between 11am to 5pm), soup and kimchi. The set meals are even more affordable; the cheapest of which is only ¥580 for 100g of meat plus the aforementioned accompaniments.

For more than 20 years, Ginza Shabutsu has been a local favourite for shabu-shabu (Japanese hotpot), thanks to its fresh ingredients and excellent value for money. At lunch, ¥880 will get you a plate of finely sliced pork, beef, duck or beef tongue; a combination of two is ¥1,100. The staff will fire up your pot of light chicken broth, then bring you your banquet: a plate piled high with tofu, cabbage, carrots and bean noodles; an array of condiments like ponzu (citrus and soy dipping sauce) and the signature sesame sauce made from no fewer than 20 ingredients; your selected meat; and a bowl of steamed rice...

Kushikatsu – ingredients dipped in breadcrumbs and deep-fried until crisp and golden – were invented in the early 1900s and grew in popularity during the wartime era when workers sought fast and affordable meals. Kushikatsu Tanaka in Daikanyama is a great place to sample this cheap and cheerful dish, with plenty to satisfy vegetarians, seafood- and meat-lovers alike. The crisp lotus root is a perennial favourite, as are the juicy shiitake mushrooms and tender prawns, all for just ¥100-330 a stick – or go straight for the ¥770 deal, which offers five selected sticks.

For a unique eating-out experience, bypass the generic Italian restaurants and head straight for Garage 50 in Kichijoji, where the pizzas are cooked in a retrofitted VW van. It’s hipster, sure, and you’ll be eating off paper plates while sitting on a stool in a garage, but the pizza is of exceptional value at ¥600. The inside of the vehicle has been refurbished to fit a pizza oven and the owner makes each pie fresh upon order. You can’t go wrong with the prosciutto topped with a soft egg, or the basil mascarpone.

Within the flashing neon lights and clutter of Shinjuku, you can take refuge in the calm, old-worldly charm of Hayashiya, tucked into the 5th floor of a high-rise building. It serves yoshoku – Japanese-style Western food – and the menu has barely changed since it opened in 1949. Signature dishes include the omurice (¥720), a paper-thin omelette cocooned around chicken fried rice and drizzled with ketchup, and the cheese hamburg (hamburger patty; ¥880). An extensive drinks list features wine from all over the world as well as Japanese craft sake.

Cheap and cheerful, Fukuho Gyoza offers plates of six dumplings for just ¥319. While the gyoza are nothing fancy, they are substantial and filling, available with or without garlic, boiled or fried. To spruce up your meal, the sides (from ¥132) include pickled cabbage, miso cucumber, fried burdock and dandan tofu. Complete your meal with rice (either served straight or topped with minced meat) and you’ll be satisfactorily sated, with your wallet barely dented. Here with friends (or just very hungry)? An order of 18 gyoza comes in at only ¥869.

Flavoursome Vietnamese fast food is the name of the game at this low-key Ebisu sandwich joint. The excellent baguettes, made in-house, are stuffed with mouthwatering ingredients: we love the roast pork and pâté option, as well as the grilled chicken satay with green onions. There are nine sandwich choices (small from ¥450; large from ¥580) while a banh mi set with a drink, soup or salad is an extra ¥150-250. With prices this low, you won’t mind that there are just a scattering of stools should you decide to eat in.

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