Tokyo Local ― Cult Recipes from the Street That Make the City

This gorgeous cookbook captures the vibrant heartbeat of a city obsessed with food.

It’s the chicken-skin yakitori you eat at 2 a.m. in a bar the size of a cupboard. It’s the pork curry you devour after having to line up for 45 minutes with a bunch of excited teenagers. It’s the yuzu ramen you slurp after ordering it from a vending machine. It’s the tonkatsu you buy in a vast shopping-center basement. And it’s the oden that’s served to you by a laid-back surfer from Okinawa.

Tokyo is an explorer’s dream and a food lover’s paradise. Featuring a gorgeous combination of studio and street photography, Tokyo Local brings you seventy recipes for the dishes that define the city. The book is divided into chapters “Early”, “Mid”, and “Late,” to create a sense of the city and the food that drives it at all times of the day. The focus of the recipes is on delicious but approachable food designed to be enjoyed with friends, so you can capture the magic of Tokyo at home.

Brendan and Caryn Liew set up their pop-up Japanese café, chotto, in 2016, bringing the art of traditional ryokan-style breakfasts to the Australian city of Melbourne. The café transported diners to Japan on a cultural and culinary journey that traversed old and new, everything inspired from countryside dinners on the Nakasendo trail, to the food of Japan’s far north and deep south, and the animated feasts of Studio Ghibli.

Head chef Brendan Liew spent time at the three-Michelin-starred Nihonryori Ryugin in Roppongi, Tokyo and Hong Kong, and also studied the art of ramen-making in Japan before delving into kappo and modern kaiseki cuisine. In Melbourne, he has worked at Kappo, Supernormal, Golden Fields and Bistro Vue. Together, Brendan and Caryn have travelled extensively through Japan’s countryside and major cities to explore, learn and live Japan’s culture and cuisine.