Gluten free dining in Tokyo Japan 東京的無麩質日本料理

Travelling gluten-free in Tokyo is actually better than expected. I've summarised below the key GF stores, restaurants, and products from Tokyo.

Confirmed GF

S. Komatsu: I read about this traditional style Japanese restaurant from this blog. I'm really excited about this place! The person who handled my reservation, Sally, is fluent in English and replied with a very long email to address my concerns. They also have gluten free soy sauce (500ml), bread, and pastry for advance take out order. My dining experience there was amazing. They were able to cater to my other allergies as well. Service was amazing, especially since the waiter can speak decent English. See detailed review here. It was the best meal I had in Tokyo, even for my non-gluten free boyfriend!  東京的無麩質日本料理

Grom gelato from Italy is officially GF except for specific flavours. It is available at 0101 in Shinjuku. It was my favourite gelato in NYC!

Natural Lawson is a convenient store china where you can find some GF products. Please see this post for some of the products I got from Natural Lawson.

Potentially GF
Komatuan (小松庵 at 新宿高島屋/Takashimaya) [GF soba. but uncertain cooking condition] : Komatuan has soba noodles that are 100% buckwheat (no wheat flour). However, they do it for quality noodles rather than for allergy reason. I wasn't able to confirm if they boil the noodles in the same water with the soba with wheat flour... I ordered a plain steamed version. They also have a set that comes with salad and steak with rice as shown in the picture but the steak has sauce on it. Just remember to bring your own soy sauce to mix with water as dipping sauce for the soba.


Farmer's stage (Noukanodaidokoro 農家の台所) [has dishes that appear GF free] is a restaurant that serves fresh local vegetables free of pesticide, etc. I recommend their "タジン鍋" (tagine pot) dish that seems to be cooked with no sauce. You have a choice of either chicken or fish with different kind of local vegetables. The tagine pot i nthe picture to the left comes with 3 dipping sauce (olive oil, miso, and salt). The servers can speak decent English. So with a GF restaurant card, you should be able to have a very yummy local GF meal. The dishes are like painting palettes! If you are visiting the restaurant, remember to order their juice. They are fabulous.

GF Status Uncertain
Rire is a restaurant with bakery that offer rice flour bread but I didn't get a chance to see if they are actually gluten free rice flour bread. Rire is a restaurant catered to people with allergy. I wonder if they are aware of celiac disease. I haven't checked as they are only reachable by phone. Do let me know if you tried.

Soup Stock Tokyo is a healthy soup chain. They list all the ingredients in their soup which you can also view online. However, they have starch (澱粉) in most soup but they dont specify what kind of starch. And for other soups, they have chicken broth (チキンブイヨン) which again we have no details of. I left a message on their twitter. Wonder if they'd reply.

Gopan Cafe is a popup cafe by Sanyo that sells bread made with rice flour. Sadly, according to their website, the bread at Gopan Cafe is not gluten-free =( . ("小麦ゼロコースではなく、通常の米パンコースで作るゴパンとなりますので、お店で試食いただくゴパンにはグルテン(小麦成分)が含まれています。") They will start selling rice bread machine in Oct. This machine has gluten free option and can turn rice to bread in 4 hours!

My advice is, bring or buy your GF soy sauce or rice toppings. Worse comes to worst, you can always order plain rice and mix it with GF soy sauce.

Other resources:
http://glutensensitivity.net/Japan_full_travel_summary%5B1%5D.pdf