Address Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Nezu 2-12-15 Opening Hours Tuesday to Sunday 12:00 to 14:30 and 17:00 to 22:30 (21:30 on Holidays) Telephone 3828-1440 Menu No menu CC OK

Hantei is an extremely beautiful and traditionally stylish Japanese bulding whose construction predates WW II and the Great 1922 Tokyo Earthquake. The few buildings spared by the fire that day in the Low City were mostly around Ueno, and the three story house that is now Hantei is one of them. For this reason and its intrinsic beauty it has been deservedly declared a National Treasure. The interior is even more stunning than the outside, also because it's been superbly kept and renewed. It's a pleasure to be there, and you can eat at any of its three stories as you wish. You will have to speak Japanese.

The food, as everything else here, is very elegant, from the tiny cubes of avocado jelly to the carefully arranged miso paste. There is no menu, you just start getting skewers of always changing composition and this goes on until you have had enough.

Hantei is more a place to drink than to eat, and it's not particularly cheap. Still, to be what it is it's reasonably priced and definitely worth a visit. It's few meters from Chiyoda line's Sendagi station Exit.