EVENTS
GAMBERO ROSSO & FRIENDS
24 HOURS IN TOKYO by kyoko nakayama
Kyoko is Forbes Japan official columnist. After working as a TV announcer, she is now a judge at the World Restaurant Awards. She reviews restaurants in Singapore and Japanese magazines. Her hobbies? Climbing Kilimanjaro and traveling to unexplored countries. Currently, she has been to 50 countries.
How do you see the recovery of the restaurant scene in Tokyo? Which will be the key topics for the post-covid time? Tokyo entered phase two of virus plan, so no longer under the state of emergency, but it would take a bit more time for the people to go back to the restaurants like before. Neighborhood restaurants are okay, but in general, fine dining serving multiple courses doesn’t have much diners. “Avoiding the three Cs� (1. Closed spaces with poor ventilation. 2. Crowded places with many people nearby. 3. Close-contact settings) is the base strategy in Japan, so during state of emergency, people had been avoid staying in the closed spaces, such as restaurants. Now, in Tokyo is good weather, so lots of casual restaurants open its door and has decent number of the customers. But for the fine dining, it is difficult, because of the structure of the building, so in that case, some restaurants open the alfresco seats. So, I find 3 key-topics. First of all, Avoiding the three Cs. Some restaurants offer the casual menu for local repeaters. But at the same timing, some restaurants need to raise the price, since the space between the tables is larger than before, so they cannot serve as many people compare to before Covid. Also they lost lots of money under nearly two-months-long state of emergency. This is tough dilemma for the restaurants. This crisis make the restaurant owners to recognize that the importance of diversification of business. The restaurants put lots of power for take away and delivery during these under Covid situation, some continuously doing it. The ratio of revenue is not high (compare to the normal service), but it is more stable than waiting the diners in the restaurants. This can be another pillar income of the restaurants.
GAMBERO ROSSO
16
JUNE 2020