Why you should experience Al Mina in Tokyo, Japan.
Al Mina is a singular Palestinian restaurant where Kanda's international dining culture, Shadi Bashiyi's Haifa upbringing, professional experience spanning Italy, Amsterdam and Japan and the olive oil, za'atar and slow-cooked meats of his homeland converge in one deeply personal kitchen.
Set along Kanda Tacho near Yasukuni-dori and just steps from Kanda Station, the restaurant translates Bashiyi's culinary life across several countries into Palestinian cooking grounded in ingredients brought directly from the region. Palestinian virgin olive oil and spices underpin hummus, tabbouleh and grilled meats before maqluba and mansaf carry the table toward the rice dishes Bashiyi associates with home. Pita receives another personal connection through his period working in an Amsterdam bakery, while his earlier Italian training surfaces through a professional career broader than Palestinian cookery alone. The result is a Kanda restaurant where Bashiyi's migration, family cooking and international training give Palestinian food a highly personal home in Central Tokyo.
What you should know about Al Mina.
Al Mina is best known for owner-chef Shadi Bashiyi, a Palestinian from Haifa whose professional life in food began long before he reached Japan. Bashiyi started helping at his uncle's Arab restaurant around age fifteen, then entered Italian cooking and rose to kitchen shift manager at nineteen before becoming chef and manager at twenty-two. His Italian career lasted more than eight years, after which he moved to Amsterdam in 2001 to deepen his cooking experience and spent a year working in a bakery from 2002, adding breadmaking to a repertoire already spanning Arab and Italian food. A visit to Japan for the 2002 FIFA World Cup exposed Bashiyi to the limited availability of halal Mediterranean cooking in Tokyo, and he later settled in Japan, worked in Japanese restaurants and developed Al Mina as a vehicle for the Palestinian food of his childhood. His career subsequently reached diplomatic and luxury-hospitality circles: Bashiyi has cooked for Middle Eastern VIPs visiting Japan and partnered with five-star hotels to prepare special halal cuisine for royal-family members. Tokyo Tokyo Delicious Museum selected him for its chef programming in 2023, where he joined TACO RiCO founder Noboru Kitajima for a stage discussion devoted to diversity in food, and brought Al Mina back to the festival in 2025 and 2026. Bashiyi's progression from his uncle's Haifa restaurant through Italian kitchens, an Amsterdam bakery, Japanese restaurants, royal hospitality and major Tokyo food events gives Al Mina unusual depth as the work of a Palestinian chef whose career has crossed several culinary traditions.
Maqluba concentrates that biography into one of the dishes closest to Bashiyi's family cooking, layering long-grain rice with eggplant, carrot, cauliflower and chicken before the completed pot is inverted for service. Cinnamon and cardamom carry through the rice, while a chilled yogurt-and-olive sauce introduces acidity and dairy against the roasted chicken and vegetables. Mansaf moves deeper into slow cooking through mutton simmered with spices for five to six hours before arriving over rice and nuts, producing a richer counterpoint to the vegetable-heavy maqluba. Hummus, labneh, foul and olive paste then bring the meal back toward the shared mezze traditions of Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and the wider historical region of al-Sham, with Bashiyi's handmade pita connecting those spreads directly to his bakery experience in Amsterdam. Al Mina makes Bashiyi's own culinary path edible through breadmaking, Palestinian olive oil, Levantine mezze, inverted rice cookery and long-braised mutton, preserving techniques that reach from his Haifa childhood into his professional kitchen in Kanda.
How to fold Al Mina into your trip.
Al Mina works as the restaurant anchor for an afternoon tracing Kanda through Edo religious history, Meiji railway engineering and the surviving architecture of Tokyo's early metropolitan rail network.
Begin at Kanda Myojin Shrine, founded at Shibasaki in 730 before Edo's expansion carried it through successive relocations and onto its present hill in 1616. Taira no Masakado had entered the shrine's religious history by 1309, while Tokugawa rule elevated Kanda Myojin into a guardian of Edo whose Kanda Matsuri procession received access to Edo Castle. Continue to Old Manseibashi Station, where Kingo Tatsuno designed the red-brick terminal completed in 1912 for the Chuo Line. Tokyo Station and nearby Kanda Station reduced Manseibashi's importance within only a few years, and the station closed in 1943, leaving its viaduct, platforms and granite 1912 Stairs embedded beside the Kanda River. Conclude at mAAch ecute Kanda Manseibashi, where MIKAN Architects transformed those railway remains into a contemporary complex while retaining the brick arches, 1912 and 1935 staircases and former platform; a glass enclosure now occupies the old track level between operating Chuo Line rails. The progression moves from Kanda Myojin Shrine's eighth-century foundation and Tokugawa patronage through Tatsuno's Meiji railway architecture into MIKAN Architects' treatment of the surviving viaduct, revealing the religious and infrastructural history surrounding Al Mina.
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