Restaurants
One of the most popular attractions of Toyosu Market is its array of restaurants. Starting at the crack of dawn, visitors touring the facility for the day form lines for a chance to eat some of the freshest sushi available anywhere. The main purpose of these restaurants, however, is to feed the approximately 10,000 people working at the market after they finish their early-morning shifts.
Daybreak delicacies
There are 13 restaurants in the Management Facilities Building, 22 in the Fisheries Intermediate Wholesale Market Building, and 3 in the Fruit and Vegetable Market Building. From around 7 a.m., these eateries begin to fill with market workers taking a breakfast break or refueling after a long night of labor. Because of the unconventional hours required by jobs at the market, many of the restaurants open as early as 4 a.m. in order to cater to their clientele. Like the seafood traders on the market floors, the restaurants’ chefs and servers start their days early, arriving at work before sunrise to prepare the kitchen for service.
Many of the restaurants at the market have been in business for decades, and the oldest ones were founded more than a century ago. They are a part of the long history of the city’s fish market, which was relocated from Tsukiji to Toyosu in 2018. Only restaurants that were part of the market when it was still based in Tsukiji were permitted to open in Toyosu. Most of these establishments have been operating for so long that they have regular customers whose parents and even grandparents frequented the same establishment. Like a significant number of the market workers, many chefs and restaurant staff serving food at the market go into their professions with the intent of dedicating their lives to their work, and rarely plan to retire in the conventional sense of the word.
From sushi to sandwiches
Though sushi bars make up the majority of restaurants at Toyosu Market, there are plenty of other options for dining. These include ramen and udon noodles, gyudon (beef over rice), Chinese food, curry, deep-fried meat and fish, sandwiches, and much more. As the market’s wholesalers, fishmongers, and other workers spend most of their time engaged in physical labor and surrounded by raw fish, many of them like the large portions served at the market, as well as the option of a meat-based dish to finish their day.
