From our other sites
The story
On 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” (a general live-commentary board), the perennial topic “Tokyo food is bad” came up again, drawing 41 replies. The thread starter suggested it might just be regional posters trying to one-up Tokyo, or that they simply hadn’t found the good restaurants yet — but the discussion quickly branched into differences in tap water, the number of Michelin-starred restaurants, and high rent and advertising costs. Opinions split between those pointing to the abundance of high-end restaurants as proof that “Tokyo food is great,” and those arguing that the average quality of everyday, affordable restaurants is actually higher out in the regions. The debate never reached a consensus.
What people said
Is it just rural folks trying to flex about their hometown?
Or have they genuinely never found a good restaurant?
Apparently Panasonic (or someone) put out a ranking saying Osaka's water is the worst, with Kyoto's not much different.
And Okinawa's supposedly the worst of all.
Locations that constantly get that kind of fresh foot traffic are limited to high-rent spots like near train stations, so if you're relying on newbies alone, your fixed costs are too heavy — you're on the same instant-bankruptcy track as those bubble tea shops.
Nah, chicken-bone soy sauce broth is genuinely delicious. Way better than Jiro (the famous ramen chain), no question.
That's because they only go to trendy places — they're too image-conscious.
Of course, if you cooked with mineral water instead it'd probably taste fine.
In Tokyo, spending money on advertising is more profitable than improving food quality if you want to win that competition. Since customers turn over so fast, even a place bad enough that nobody ever comes back twice can stay afloat just by fooling first-timers with ads.
But to win against other places that also pour money into ads, you'd need good taste, right?
In Tokyo, a place that's 100% advertising and 0% taste out-earns one that's 50% advertising and 50% taste.
If anything it's the opposite — unlike in the regions, that kind of word-of-mouth doesn't spread in Tokyo, so you're more likely to end up picking a dud.
The inside of the shop is tiny, so people can't all fit in 🤪 It's not even that big a line 🤪
The inside of the shop is tiny, so people can't all fit in 🤪 It's not even that big a line 🤪
The inside of the shop is tiny, so people can't all fit in 🤪 It's not even that big a line 🤪
Even regional cities, if they're decently sized, let you eat cuisine from all over the world, and hotels there have high-end restaurants too. If you're going to count that as fair game, there's no such thing as a region with bad food.
Ingredients degrade during transport. And on top of that, so many restaurants cook with tap water.
More precisely: it goes to Tokyo's (high-end restaurants). Ordinary people only get what's left over — the scraps.
Good high-end restaurants also run cheap lunch sets. Regular places have to compete with that, which pushes their quality up too.
Pay's better [in Tokyo], so it's obvious which side attracts the better talent.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The “Tokyo food is bad” theory isn’t only about regional posters trying to one-up Tokyo — it’s also been debated from a more practical angle: how high rent and labor costs feed into the trade-off between price and quality. Tokyo’s tap water, drawn from sources like the Tama River system, undergoes advanced treatment, and its hardness is said to be lower than the national average — meaning the thread’s claim that it’s “super hard water that ruins the food” runs counter to the common understanding. The high number of Michelin-starred restaurants is also a skewed metric, weighted toward pricey high-end establishments, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of the everyday, affordable places most people actually eat at. Where the thread split was over framing — whether to judge Tokyo by its “high-end restaurants” or its “everyday restaurants” — which led to opposite conclusions even though everyone was looking at the same city. The point that “restaurants that spend more on advertising make more money” was also raised as a structural feature unique to a huge city with such rapid customer turnover, and should be read as a separate issue from the actual quality of the food itself.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “You see “Tokyo food sucks” takes all the time, and honestly it’s kind of sad.“
Leave a Reply