Gastronomy tourism in Tokyo: Edo’s fermented delights

Opened in 2024, Brooks Greenlit Café is a stylish new spot in Minami-Aoyama offering kombucha, plant-based sandwiches and more. Kantaro Oizumi, CEO of the Oizumi Kojo company that runs the café, was inspired to start making kombucha and open Brooks Greenlit Café after he discovered kombucha, which is made from fermented sweet tea, while living in the United States. He credits the beverage for significant improvements to his health and overall wellbeing.

In recent decades, kombucha has experienced a massive surge in popularity in Western countries, driven largely by the growing wellness industry. Many health benefits have been ascribed to kombucha in terms of improving gut health, decreasing inflammation and cholesterol, and boosting the immune system. It has also been marketed as a sophisticated non-alcoholic alternative to beverages like wine or beer.

Fermented drinks have been popular in Japan for their health benefits since the Edo period, when beverages such as amazake, a sweet fermented rice drink, were widely consumed. However, the drink (known as kocha kinoko in Japanese) that would eventually evolve into modern kombucha was actually introduced to the United States from Asia. While kocha kinoko was briefly popular in Japan in the 1970s, kombucha did not take hold until much later. This may be in part due to a linguistic coincidence that has caused some confusion. In Japanese, the word kombu refers to kelp and cha to tea, leading many people here to believe that kombucha is made from kelp. This is made even more confusing by the fact that a traditional savoury drink called kelp tea does exist in Japan.

Oizumi notes that if the popularity of fermented drinks is used as a yardstick, people’s interest in wellbeing doesn’t apppear to have changed much from the Edo period to the present. ‘In the US, they tend to use black tea to make kombucha. We blend our Ship Kombucha, which we make in our own factory, with Japanese green and black tea, which I think leads to a kombucha that’s distinctive to Japan. So far, our customers seem to agree.’

Some of the store’s speciality drinks also cater to Japan’s love of seasonal flavours. As well as premium organic kombucha, the café offers smoothies that combine kombucha with seasonal fruit, vegetables, coffee and other delicious ingredients. Some even incorporate amazake, which was considered a particularly refreshing summer drink in the Edo period.

Located in the ever-trendy neighbourhood of Shimokitazawa, this one-of-a-kind establishment is a café, grocery store, archive and classroom dedicated to informing visitors about fermentation. Opened in 2020 by fermentation researcher Hiraku Ogura, Hakko Department offers the perfect introduction to the diversity of fermented foods from across Japan. 

Ogura is the author of the best-selling book Fermental Cultural Anthropology (2017), which delves deep into the history, geography and science of fermentation in Japan in relation to similar traditions from other parts of the world. He came up with the idea of Hakko Department after travelling to rural parts of Japan and discovering rare fermentation techniques and delicacies, many of which were known only to local residents.

‘In so many of these places, fewer and fewer people were making these incredibly unique fermented foods,’ he explains. ‘Many were on the verge of completely disappearing. The city of Edo was a place where people from all over Japan brought their customs and traditions – including fermentation techniques – which were then reconstructed and refined in the city. It seemed to me that a shop like Hakko Department could do something similar in modern Tokyo. Through selling as many of these unique fermented products as we can to customers in Tokyo, we hope to help preserve local fermented food cultures around Japan.’

People who moved to Edo often adapted their cuisine from home to suit local preferences. The same process can be seen in action at Hakko Department, where on the shelves, you’ll find plenty of fermented items suited to the modern kitchen, including ketchup and mayonnaise made from fermented sake lees, jars of fermented chilli paste, and packets of fermented tofu. Many varieties of more conventional items like soy sauce, sake, mirin and miso, made essentially the same way as in the Edo period, are also available.

On our visit, the café section of Hakko Department offered a healthy Mingei Lunch Set that featured a range of delectable fermented ingredients. Just a few of these delights included multigrain rice stored in winter snow rooms (yukimuro) to enhance its sweetness and rich texture, pickled vegetables steeped in amazake (sweet non-alcoholic sake), and steamed pork marinated in salt koji (koji is a type of rice mould essential to the fermentation that produces sake, miso and soy sauce). Everything was delicious, but the pork was a particular delight with its juicy yet firm texture and savoury hints of umami.

In addition, Hakko Department offers irregular workshops where you can try your hand at fermentation yourself, for instance by mixing soy sauce with koji and taking it home to enjoy as a zesty condiment. It’s the ideal place for deepening your understanding of fermentation while savouring its benefits for yourself.

Dashi, the use of which become widespread during the Edo period, is one of the fundamental elements of Japanese cooking, used as stock for everything from miso soup and ramen to okonomiyaki, oyakodon and yaki-udon. Dashi is derived from ingredients such as dried and smoked bonito flakes and kombu kelp, which release their deep umami flavours as they are boiled or simmered in water or other liquids. Some types of bonito flakes are sometimes also fermented for preservation and to accentuate their deep umami flavours.

The intermediate wholesale company Okume Shoten opened in 1871 at the Nihonbashi fish market, selling seafood and related products. The business relocated to the new fish market in Tsukiji in the 1920s, where it remained until moving to its current location in Toyosu in 2018. With Dashi Okume, its retail arm, the company seeks to share a greater variety of fine Japanese dashi with people from all over Japan and around the world. In addition to locations in Mie prefecture, Tokyo’s Tsukiji and New York, Dashi Okume runs a store inside the Azabudai Hills shopping centre in Tokyo.

Store manager Taketora Goto explains that dashi has long varied across Japan, based on local preferences. ‘In Kyoto, dashi was often made from kombu, which gives it a light yet strong flavour. On the other hand, the popularity of soba in Edo led people to prefer crisper dashi with more noticeable hints of the fish – in other words, dashi that packs a bit of a punch.’ During the Edo period, as the use of dashi became more widespread, ordinary people also used a wider range of ingredients to make it, often substituting cheaper dried fish like sardines for expensive bonito.

Dashi Okume aims to celebrate the variety and adaptability of dashi through the astonishing array of dried and fermented ingredients sold in their stores. At the Azabudai Hills location, customers cluster eagerly around the main display, peering curiously at over 30 different ingredients, ranging from classic dried bonito and kelp to anchovies, mackerel and flying fish, and delightful surprises like tomatoes, garlic, carrots and onions.

If you’d like, you can create your own dashi on site. The people of Edo often blended dashi using fish and kelp to achieve deeper umami flavour, and in doing so, the skill of discerning quality ingredients was crucial. This perspective, although with a modern twist and produce, shines through at Dashi Okume, where you get to select ingredients by engaging in dialogue with the staff, choosing a combination of produce which will be ground up and combined for you by the machines visible through a large glass window at the back of the shop. Staff members will be happy to guide you towards promising combinations of ingredients or to discuss potential recipes and preparation methods using your particular dashi.

Dashi Okume also sells several different pre-made blends: Tokyo Dashi, Kyoto Dashi, Classic Dashi and Premium Dashi. To choose, you can sample small cups of broth prepared using each blend.

When you first arrive at the building that houses Namida, you might wonder if your phone has played tricks on you. The restaurant is one of a number of eateries and shops housed within a former junior high school near the well-known junction of Ikejiri Ohashi in Setagaya. While the school building itself has been largely left as it was, the interior of Namida has been cleverly renovated to provide just the right mix of sophistication and nostalgia.

Chef Yoshifumi Tashima is fascinated by the nature of fermentation. ‘It’s so intriguing when you think about it,’ he says. ‘Humans co-exist with all these different micro-organisms – some harmful, some helpful. The fact that our ancestors happened upon the benefits of fermenting food so many centuries ago without any sort of modern scientific understanding is quite incredible.’

One of Tashima’s most succulent specialties is an homage to the innovative fermented food culture of Edo. It is based on a common side dish called kakuya made from stir-fried pickles that was eaten by the working people of Edo. Tashima’s intricate version uses sweet bettara pickles made from fermented daikon, which originated in Edo, layering them with oil, emulsified egg yolks and a steamed shiitake mushroom. Each bite triggers a delicate explosion of sweet, savoury and tart flavours, celebrating this modern take on a traditional fermented delicacy that makes the culinary legacy of Edo readily accessible to 21st-century diners.

While Tashima appreciates the achievements of his predecessors, he feels no need whatsoever to be bound by traditional recipes or ingredients. For example, while he prefers to use time-honoured fermented condiments such as umami-rich, aromatic soy sauce brewed in wooden barrels, a technique that was developed during the Edo period, he also incorporates his experience in Italian cuisine by bringing in tomatoes, which he ferments using lactic bacteria and uses to marinate wild game meat like venison. This technique makes the meat juicier and more tender.

By taking the tradition of fermentation and applying it to ingredients and cooking methods not found in classical Japanese cuisine, Tashima is able to conjure up dishes where the familiar coexists with the unexpected – a natural evolution that aligns with contemporary tastes.

When asked about the health benefits of fermented foods, Tashima smiles. ‘I think people in the Edo period ate this kind of food mostly because it tasted good. But even before modern medicine, they probably sensed that it was good for them. Maybe now it’s the other way around. People have heard that fermented food is good for them, but it’s my job to show them that it can also be incredibly delicious.’

To learn more about the culture and history of Edo and how to experience it in today’s Tokyo, see this website by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Bureau of Citizens, Culture and Sports.

For more on Tokyo’s rich food culture, visit Go Tokyo Gourmet, the official website promoting the city as a culinary destination.