Kandagawa Honten is one of Tokyo's most renowned purveyors of unagi. More than that, though, it's one of the city's all-time classic restaurants — of any genre. It moved to its current site below Kanda Myojin shrine in Meiji times (and that's when it adopted its current name). But by that time it had already been in business for almost 100 years — since 1805, they say.
The current building is 60 years old, rebuilt after the war — and it's a beauty, all polished wood and gravitas, like a genteel old-style ryokan. If you've never been there, this is what you can expect...
And this is what the neighbourhood used to look like — a photo dating from the 1920s or so.
