Why you should experience Morethan Grill in Tokyo, Japan.
Morethan Grill is a sophisticated grill restaurant where Nishi-Shinjuku's metropolitan character, park-facing calm, seasonal Japanese produce and open-fire cooking bring measured refinement to the western edge of Tokyo's busiest commercial center.
Set along Junisha-dori near Koen-dori and just steps from Shinjuku Central Park, the second-floor dining room frames the park through broad windows, using timber, dark upholstery and generous spacing to carry the greenery outside into a composed interior. Daylight across the treetops gradually gives way to an evening room shaped by lower illumination and the visual focus of the grill, sharpening anticipation as dinner moves deeper into the night. Plates emerging from the kitchen complete that progression with charred surfaces, concentrated aromas and presentations precise enough to match the restrained room around them. The result is a Nishi-Shinjuku restaurant where park, architecture and fire create a remarkably complete setting for the culinary philosophy behind Morethan Grill.
What you should know about Morethan Grill.
Morethan Grill is best known for opening on August 8, 2018 as MOTHERS' second-floor restaurant within the reborn THE KNOT TOKYO Shinjuku, placing the hospitality company's cooking inside a 39-year-old hotel undergoing a ¥4 billion reinvention. The property had opened in 1979 as Shinjuku New City Hotel under the family of current hotel manager Tatsuya Ikeda, before Ichigo acquired the building and rebuilt the aging operation around its THE KNOT boutique-hotel project. The reconstruction ran from 2017 through July 2018, with Flowstone Creative Industries directing the front-of-house concept, Yas Design International handling guestrooms, Tanseisha undertaking front-of-house work and restaurant interiors, Shimizu Corporation executing structural reinforcement and building upgrades, and Yamashita PMC managing the redevelopment. Ichigo retained fragments of the former hotel, including tiles reused in the new welcome-area floor, inside a project conceived under the phrase “We are the People's Park,” a reference to Shinjuku Central Park directly opposite. MOTHERS operated the complete Morethan hospitality program across 1,494.67 square meters of the first two floors, opening a bakery, first-floor restaurant and second-floor grill with 80 employees across the operation. The restaurant interiors formed part of a 643-square-meter second floor containing a 53-square-meter kitchen, giving the grill a quieter counterpart to the larger first-floor hospitality program. Morethan Grill emerged from that coordinated hotel reinvention as the culinary component designed for the property's slower side, connecting MOTHERS' restaurant work with one of Nishi-Shinjuku's substantial adaptive-reuse projects.
The Josper oven now controls the culinary progression, applying charcoal heat to predominantly Japanese-bred meats after fermentation and aging have developed deeper savor before cooking begins. Seasonal fish and vegetables enter the same heat source with less intervention, allowing smoke and concentrated surface browning to sharpen ingredients selected around narrow periods of peak condition. Pasta provides a softer bridge through the meal, drawing seasonal produce into sauces whose moisture and texture temper the grill's deeper roasted notes. Wine then carries acidity and structure against aged meat and charcoal, extending the effects of fermentation from the kitchen into the glass. Morethan Grill builds dinner around seasonality, maturation and fire, allowing the Josper to convert carefully timed ingredients into a coherent expression of the restaurant's cooking.
How to fold Morethan Grill into your trip.
Morethan Grill works as the dinner culmination for an afternoon tracing shrine patronage, metropolitan landscape planning and Kenzo Tange's late-career architecture through the western reaches of Shinjuku.
Begin at Shinjuku Kumano Shrine, whose association with the district reaches back centuries and preserves the Juniso name once applied to the surrounding area, giving Nishi-Shinjuku a religious and geographic history preceding its skyscrapers. Continue through Shinjuku Central Park, the major green ground beside the restaurant, whose position among Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings preserves open public space inside the administrative district that replaced earlier urban uses across western Shinjuku. Conclude at Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, completed in December 1990 and opened in 1991 from Kenzo Tange's design, with twin towers rising 242.9 meters in a complex engineered by Kiyoshi Muto that briefly became Japan's tallest building by roof height. The progression moves from the district's premodern sacred geography through metropolitan open space into Tange's immense civic architecture, revealing the historical layers surrounding Morethan Grill beneath Nishi-Shinjuku's contemporary skyline.
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