Japanese restaurants with Michelin stars

The Michelin Guide is one of the most renowned travel guides in the world. If you are looking for a high-level Japanese restaurant, you should definitely look for restaurants with Michelin stars and prepare your wallet. In this article, we will see restaurants in Japan that have Michelin stars.

The Michelin Guide awards from one to 3 stars to measure culinary excellence. Hotels and travel apps use another scale, up to 5. In culinary arts, critics stop at 3.

The lists below follow the Michelin Guide Tokyo 2026, announced on September 25, 2025, and the Michelin Guide Kyoto and Osaka 2026, from April 2026. A restaurant can lose a star, leave the guide, or stop taking public reservations. Check the name on the official site before you cross the country for a table. I hope you enjoy the list of restaurants in this article.

Tokyo alone passed 160 starred restaurants in the 2026 edition. The cut here is the current three-star houses, a few names readers still search from older lists, and the safest way to find where to eat when a star moves.

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How much does a Michelin Star Restaurant cost in Japan?

The costs of a Michelin star restaurant in Japan can vary greatly depending on various factors, such as location, chef's reputation, number of stars, type of cuisine, and whether the table is lunch or dinner.

To give a general idea, lunch in more affordable one-star restaurants can still start around 10,000 yen per person. In high-end restaurants, with two or three stars, dinner can easily exceed 30,000 yen per person, and at kaiseki or counter sushi it often reaches 50,000 or 80,000 yen, before drinks.

Michelin Restaurant Recommendations in Japan

We can't just list the restaurants without talking a bit about the dishes, so below I will recommend the main restaurants by briefly describing the dishes of each one.

Sukiyabashi Jiro (Tokyo)

Specialty: high-quality sushi, prepared with refined techniques and carefully selected fresh ingredients. The Ginza counter held 3 stars every year from 2007. In the 2020 guide Michelin dropped Sukiyabashi Jiro Honten from coverage: the table stopped taking reservations from the general public, and the guide only reviews restaurants anyone can try to book. The documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Barack Obama's 2014 dinner still pull the name, but the current star is out of the guide.

RyuGin (Tokyo)

Specialty: contemporary kaiseki cuisine, known for creative dishes that combine tradition and innovation. In the Michelin Guide Tokyo 2026, RyuGin still holds 3 stars, now in Chiyoda after years in Roppongi.

Sushi Saito (Tokyo)

Specialty: world-class sushi, emphasizing simplicity and the perfection of ingredients, especially fresh fish. It left the guide in the same 2020 round, also because reservations closed to the public. It stays on the map for people who already have access. For a visitor booking from abroad, the name no longer works as a Michelin 3-star table.

Kitcho Arashiyama Honten (Kyoto)

Specialty: traditional Japanese kaiseki cuisine, with elaborate dishes and impeccable presentation, using seasonal ingredients. It held 3 stars in the Kyoto guide for 12 years, from 2010 to 2021. In the Kyoto and Osaka 2026 edition the house does not appear among the three-star restaurants. The kaiseki in Arashiyama continues, and the top distinction that year sits at other tables, such as Kikunoi Honten and Hyotei.

Kohaku (Tokyo)

Specialty: kaiseki haute cuisine, focusing on the harmony of flavors, textures, and aesthetic presentation of dishes. After a decade at 3 stars, the Michelin Guide Tokyo 2026 left Kohaku at 2.

Makimura (Tokyo)

Specialty: high-class Japanese cuisine, emphasizing seasonal dishes prepared with technical skill and creativity. It held 3 stars from 2015 to 2024 and left the 2025 guide, under the same public-reservation rule. It is still open in Shinagawa.

Quintessence (Tokyo)

Specialty: high French gastronomy with Japanese influences, offering refined and complex dishes with exceptional flavors. In the Michelin Guide Tokyo 2026 it still holds 3 stars in Shinagawa, one of the French houses the Tokyo guide has kept at the top since the early editions.

Michelin Star Restaurants in Tokyo

The Michelin Guide Tokyo 2026 listed 12 houses with 3 stars, 26 with 2, and 122 with 1. Tokyo remains the city with the most starred restaurants in the world in that edition. The table below covers only the three-star names. The new three-star that year was Myojaku, from Hidetoshi Nakamura, in Minato.

Restaurant	District	Cuisine	Stars
Azabu Kadowaki	Minato	Japanese	3
Harutaka	Chūō	sushi	3
Joël Robuchon	Meguro	French	3
Kagurazaka Ishikawa	Shinjuku	Japanese	3
Kanda	Minato	Japanese	3
L'Effervescence	Minato	French	3
L'Osier	Chūō	French	3
Myojaku	Minato	Japanese	3
Quintessence	Shinagawa	French	3
RyuGin	Chiyoda	Japanese	3
Sazenka	Minato	Chinese	3
Sézanne	Chiyoda	French	3

Restaurants with Stars in Kansai

The Michelin Guide Kyoto and Osaka 2026, announced on April 23, 2026, left Kyoto with 6 three-star restaurants and Osaka with 3. Kyoto's new three-star was Miyamaso, a kaiseki ryokan in Hanase, the first new three-star in the region in six years.

Restaurant	City	Stars
Hyotei (瓢亭)	Kyoto	3
Miyamaso (美山荘)	Kyoto	3
Isshisoden Nakamura (一子相伝 なかむら)	Kyoto	3
Gion Sasaki (祇園さゝ木)	Kyoto	3
Kikunoi Honten (菊乃井 本店)	Kyoto	3
Mizai (未在)	Kyoto	3
Taian (太庵)	Osaka	3
Hajime (ハジメ)	Osaka	3
Kashiwaya Osaka Senriyama (柏屋 大阪千里山)	Osaka	3

Other Japanese Restaurants with Michelin Stars

Older versions of this list mixed Hokkaido, Aichi, Fukuoka and even "Mei" in place of Mie, with 3-star claims that had already dropped. Outside Tokyo and Kansai, Michelin also covers other cities spread across Japan. The source that counts is the restaurant's card in the official guide, updated with each regional edition.

If the trip is counter sushi, the vocabulary of nigiri and maki is in types of sushi. Stars move from one year to the next, and a three-star reservation disappears in minutes. Before you book the table, open the card in the official guide, confirm the star is still there, and check that the phone still takes the public. The wallet still needs to be ready, and the list needs to be in the right year.