Why you should experience Toriton in Tokyo, Japan.
Toriton is a convivial yakitori izakaya where Nishi-Shinjuku's after-work energy, salaryman drinking culture, metropolitan density and appetite for unfussy communal dining converge around freshly butchered chicken, pork and grilled skewers.
Set along Ome Kaido near Kita-dori and just steps from Shinjuku Nomura Building, the basement restaurant sits beneath the high-rise business district in a pocket shaped by offices, restaurants and late-evening drinking. Chicken arriving fresh each morning forms the kitchen's foundation, moving through negima, seseri, bonjiri and other skewers before pork brings a richer counterpart to the grill. Low-temperature pork tongue and chicken paitan stew broaden the cooking beyond yakitori, shifting between tenderness, concentrated poultry broth and the charred edges of skewered meat. The result is an izakaya where Nishi-Shinjuku's working-day intensity gives way to smoke, skewers and shared plates, preserving the informal social rhythm that makes neighborhood drinking culture distinctive.
What you should know about Toriton.
Toriton is best known for developing within Five Group's izakaya portfolio around a simple culinary relationship between tori, chicken, and ton, pork, with fresh chicken delivered each morning from a poultry farm forming the foundation for its yakitori program. Five Group grew the Toriton family across Tokyo through restaurants in Kichijoji, Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Shimokitazawa, Kinshicho and Shinjuku, adapting the core chicken-and-pork format while individual branches developed specialties ranging from smoked dishes to skewers and chicken preparations. The Nishi-Shinjuku operation occupied the basement of Shinjuku Royal Building at 7-21-1 Nishi-Shinjuku before the address entered a new chapter under the group's Tototoriton Hanare concept, which expanded the original meat-centered style through toto, or fish, alongside chicken and pork. The contemporary format retains that three-part character through raw seafood, yakitori and pork-wrapped skewers, connecting Toriton's chicken-and-pork foundation with a broader Five Group izakaya lineage built around handmade drinking food and direct-fire cooking.
Fresh chicken establishes the meal's physical rhythm as negima, seseri and bonjiri meet the grill, moving from juicy thigh meat toward springier neck and richer tail while smoke binds their contrasting textures. Low-temperature pork tongue shifts the table toward softer meat and savory scallion sauce, creating a cooler, gentler register after the char of yakitori. Chicken paitan stew returns to poultry through an opaque broth whose concentrated richness carries the flavor of the bird into a slower, spoonable form. Toriton builds its physical character through these changing treatments of chicken and pork, allowing grill smoke, rendered fat, tender meat and broth to sustain the relaxed sequence of an izakaya night.
How to fold Toriton into your trip.
Toriton works as the evening anchor for a Nishi-Shinjuku route tracing sacred continuity, postwar architectural ambition and Tokyo's ascent into a vertical business capital before dinner descends into the neighborhood's intimate izakaya culture.
Begin at Joenji Temple, whose seventeenth-century origins preceded its relocation to Nishi-Shinjuku in 1903, preserving a Buddhist precinct within a district later consumed by railway expansion and high-rise development. Continue to Shinjuku Mitsui Building, completed in 1974 through Nihon Sekkei and Mitsui Fudosan as a 225-meter tower, joining the first generation of skyscrapers that radically altered the former Yodobashi waterworks landscape. Conclude at Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, completed in 1991 through Kenzo Tange's twin-towered design, which rises 243 meters and translated the architect's modernist style into one of the defining government complexes of late twentieth-century Tokyo. The progression moves from a surviving religious institution through the first great wave of Nishi-Shinjuku skyscrapers into Tange's metropolitan seat of government, revealing the extraordinary vertical reinvention surrounding Toriton's basement izakaya setting.
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