At 95, Iron Chef Rokusaburo Michiba Is Opening Another Tokyo Restaurant

Rokusaburo Michiba is 95 and still picks up a knife. On Friday, September 11, his name goes on a new Tokyo room: Hibiya Rokusantei, on the third floor of Tokyo Midtown Hibiya.

Ginza Rokusan-tei, the restaurant he opened in 1971, turns 55 this year. It remains the long-course house for a special night. Hibiya answers a different need. The Midtown complex sits next to big screens and theaters, where people want serious Japanese food that fits between showtimes. Michiba’s kitchen is building that version of his cooking, and it inherits the soba craft from the shop that already occupied the floor.

Outside Japan he is still the original Japanese Iron Chef. On Fuji Television’s Ryori no Tetsujin in the 1990s, he fought 31 battles and finished 27-3-1, the cook many English-language viewers met first when the show traveled abroad. Born January 3, 1931, in Yamanaka Onsen, Ishikawa, he trained in Kobe and Kanazawa, became head chef at Akasaka Tokiwaya at 28, and opened Rokusan-tei in Ginza at 40.

His cooking motto is blunt: ingredients have no borders. He keeps the frame of Japanese cuisine and borrows from Western and Chinese technique when a dish needs it. In 2005 Japan named him a Modern Master Craftsman. In 2007 he received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette. Past 90 he started a YouTube channel, Tetsujin no Daidokoro, that has crossed 200,000 subscribers. The Hibiya announcement still calls him an active cook who plans menus and holds a knife.

Hibiya Rokusantei takes the space once occupied by Sobagami, the Midtown Hibiya soba room Masataka Kamiya opened in March 2018 and closed at the end of July. Kamiya’s Nogizaka Kamiya, opened in 1995, has held Michelin recognition for a looser kaiseki style that folds in sushi and soba. His soba technique stays in the building. From September, cooks from Michiba’s organization take it on and pair it with Michiba’s kitchen style.

The room is small, about 25 seats, with a seven-seat counter and two private rooms. Lunch runs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., dinner from 5:30 to 9 p.m., closed Wednesday. Lunch keeps Sobagami’s karasumi soba, the noodles finished with salted mullet roe, and adds sets such as kakiage with cold seiro soba or duck and grilled green onion with hot seiro, both ¥1,980. A roughly hour-long lunch course sits at ¥5,500. Dinner leans into soba-mae, the Edo habit of drinking and eating small plates while soba waits, with à la carte dishes from ¥500 to ¥1,980 under chef Yuji Tateno, who trained in the Michiba kitchens. A ¥13,000 course covers longer receptions.

Cooks from Michiba’s organization will run the Hibiya services, with Kamiya’s soba technique still in the room. A 95-year-old Iron Chef is putting a second Tokyo address into a shopping-and-theater complex so people can eat his kitchen’s food on ordinary nights.

Bookings are open on Tabelog and the restaurant’s reservation page. Ginza remains the long-course house. Hibiya is built for a ticket downstairs and an hour upstairs.