Why you should experience Ginger Grass in Tokyo, Japan.
Ginger Grass is a polished Thai-Vietnamese restaurant where Yoyogi's southern Shinjuku gateway, herb-intensive cooking, regional Asian flavors and Huge's modern dining approach converge beneath Odakyu Southern Tower.
Set along Shinjuku Southern Terrace near Koshu Kaido and just steps from Takashimaya Times Square, the restaurant draws Thai heat and Vietnamese freshness together through an entrance framed by tropical planting and water. Herbs imported from Thailand and Vietnam drive dishes built around chile, lemongrass, coconut, citrus and aromatic greens, supported by seasoning sauces prepared largely in-house. Tapioca flour gives the house pho noodles their distinctive chew, extending the kitchen's departures from conventional recipes into texture as well as seasoning. The result is a Yoyogi restaurant where Thai and Vietnamese foundations are deliberately combined into a modern Asian style developed specifically for this Shinjuku address.
What you should know about Ginger Grass.
Ginger Grass is best known for opening on July 14, 2018 as the first restaurant in Huge's new modern Asian concept, created by combining the chile and spice of Thai cooking with the vegetable- and herb-rich traditions of Vietnam. The company had already developed restaurant brands around Spanish-Italian and modern Mexican cooking before introducing this new branch of its portfolio at Shinjuku Southern Terrace. The location carried an architectural connection to that expansion: Sakakura Associates completed Odakyu Southern Tower and Shinjuku Southern Terrace in 1998 with Taisei Corporation and Odakyu Construction, realizing the southern end of a broader “Boulevard Concept” first proposed in 1973. The 36-story, 79,561-square-meter tower and rail-spanning terrace received a Building Contractors Society Special Prize and a national townscape award in 1999, followed by a Shinjuku urban-design award in 2000. Ginger Grass arrived there twenty years after completion, with Huge treating Thai and Vietnamese cuisine as complementary starting points rather than separating them into conventional national categories. Aromatic herbs began arriving directly from Thailand and Vietnam, house-prepared seasoning sauces reduced dependence on additive-heavy commercial products, and Japanese ingredients including tamari and dashi entered selected preparations. Tapioca flour supplied another departure through an original pho noodle developed for greater elasticity, giving the 2018 opening a culinary program defined by specific changes to ingredients, seasoning and technique.
Goi cuon opens the meal with cool rice paper around shrimp, chicken and herbs, bringing crisp vegetables and soft wrapper together before the cooking turns hotter. Yum woon sen raises the intensity through glass noodles and Thai seasoning, then tom yum kung concentrates chile, citrus and aromatic herbs into a hot, sour broth. Gai yaang carries those flavors onto roasted bone-in chicken, where browning and rendered juices provide a richer foundation for the sharper dishes around it. Green curry follows through coconut richness and spice before pad Thai moves the progression toward chewy noodles, sweetness and wok-driven depth. Pho closes from a gentler direction, with the restaurant's tapioca-flour noodles supplying a pronounced elasticity that distinguishes the bowl from conventional rice-noodle versions. Ginger Grass works best across that complete progression, allowing herbs, acidity, chile, roasting, coconut and noodle texture to shift the emphasis without separating its Thai and Vietnamese influences into competing halves.
How to fold Ginger Grass into your trip.
Ginger Grass works as the meal anchor for an afternoon tracing southern Shinjuku through fashion history, a major Meiji garden project and the late-twentieth-century architecture that redirected the district toward Yoyogi.
Begin at Bunka Gakuen Costume Museum, whose collection grew from garments assembled by Bunka Gakuen after its 1923 founding to strengthen education around Japan's adoption of Western dress, eventually expanding into Japanese and international historic costume. Continue to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, where Tokugawa Ieyasu granted land to the Naito family in 1590 before the estate became an agricultural experiment station, an Imperial botanical garden and, after a redesign involving French landscape architect Henry Martinet, an Imperial garden opened in 1906. Conclude at Shinjuku Southern Terrace, completed by Sakakura Associates in 1998 on an artificial deck above the Odakyu railway and conceived as the southern culmination of a pedestrian scheme first proposed in 1973. The progression moves from Bunka Gakuen's study of changing dress through the Naito estate's transformation into an Imperial garden and Sakakura Associates' rail-spanning architecture, revealing three distinct chapters in the development of Yoyogi and southern Shinjuku.
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