Last orders? Soaring costs and declining demand take toll on Japan’s legendary izakaya
Ramen restaurants also struggling as Japan’s culinary landscape faces economic challenges and changing customer behaviour
In the bowels of a commercial building in Tokyo’s Shinbashi neighbourhood there is little to suggest that office workers seeing in the year of the snake have lost their appetite for shared plates of Japanese food and jockeys of draught beer. They tuck into plates of charcoal-grilled chicken, bowls of edamame and flasks of hot sake. Calls of “irasshaimase!” welcome each new group of diners.
It was not that long ago that curfews and alcohol bans introduced to limit the spread of Covid-19 forced izakaya – informal, boozy salons that range in size from cosy joints serving yakitori (chicken skewers) to cavernous spaces with seemingly endless menus – to call last orders at what would have normally been the busiest time of the evening.
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