Maruta — Restaurant in Tokyo

What looks like a house is Maruta, a wood-fired restaurant with an organic herb and vegetable garden in Jindaiji. The restaurant uses ingredients from its garden, local farms, and homemade preserved ingredients, and cooks over a wood fire.

The owner who runs a landscape company beautifully manages a farm to table restaurant.

If you are a customer, you are free to explore the little but beautiful garden. The weekend lunch course menu included a rice cooked outside in the garden. We were escorted to go outside and served a bowl of rice and fresh condiments.

Though it’s about 15-20 minute bus ride from Mitaka or Chofu station, there’s a bus stop in front of the restaurant. It’s not cheap either -a little over ¥10,000 for lunch, but...

Thank you to my daughter for bringing us to this restaurant for a wonderful culinary journey. The ingredients were fresh, and we enjoyed tasting a variety of plants and unique Kombucha cocktails. The staff were friendly, enthusiastic, and happy to explain all the ingredients in excellent English. I particularly loved their special dessert. To top it off, we had the privilege of meeting the restaurant owner, who gifted us a book about their three-generation family business and took a photo with us to commemorate...

Maruta (log) is not only an anagram of the owner's name (Mr. Tamaru) but also an expression of its cooking method using a bonfire.

The oven works to heat ingredients with charcoal and to smoke those with dried wood, to make warm ambiance with fire as well. Also, ash coming of it is used for cooking.

Staring at the fire may make you sleepy as...