Suetomi AoQ Cafe Stand Kyoto

“I want old Salon but my girl wants big Salon,” says the highroller from Shanghai — who rolls in at 10 pm with friends, pondering life’s epicurean travails over a magnum of champagne that costs about a month’s rent of a studio in Brooklyn. But not all appetites here are maximalist; not in this six-seat Kiso-hinoki counter in a serene Aoyama enclave that could double as an (unmarked) safehouse for the culinary cognoscenti.

In fact, the most homespun thing you might eat at Suetomi, depending on the season, is a large, deep-fried fin of pufferfish, served with sudachi and a square of parchment so you can pull the meat apart by hand while shielding yourself from the hot juices of the prized fish. It might be one of the best things you eat all night, though 11 other courses equally showcase the chef Yasuo Suetomi’s skill at coaxing deep, nuanced flavors from very little.

Consider the broth of hamaguri clam, which resembles the contents of the Pensieve — the misty, mythical well in Harry Potter where wizards clear their excess thoughts and relive old memories. This is the bivalve in its sweetest, most swollen form, and the broth that carries an almost unadulterated expression of it. Yes, there are other prized ingredients too, like fatty, supremely juicy nodoguro, whose gently scorched skin barely holds everything together until you prod at it and it trembles.

But I don’t remember the last time bamboo shoots moved me — the last one was at Akasaka Eigetsu, half a decade ago — and here, at Suetomi, they eclipse the Wagyu course: darkly caramel-forward, with a flavor that recalled the first time I had movie-theater popcorn as a child. When these bamboo shoots return again, as the focal point of the donabe course, it may matter even more.

Because if Suetomi’s philosophy is about the removal of excess, then what remains is his gift of letting ingredients speak loudly, and beautifully, for themselves. Here’s to one of my new favorite restaurants in Tokyo.

📍Suetomi (末富), Tokyo. 🍽️ Feb ‘26. Less