Why you should experience Aladdin Hiroo in Tokyo, Japan.
Aladdin Hiroo is a pioneering Persian restaurant where Hiroo's international character, Asghar Kemestari's four decades connecting Iran and Japan, a trading business built around Persian ingredients and one of Tokyo's earliest sustained encounters with Iranian cooking converge around the table.
Set along Hiroo's residential lanes near Hiroo Sampo-dori and just steps from Hiroo Station, the restaurant draws directly from Kemestari's parallel career importing Iranian saffron, pistachios, dates, pomegranate products and basmati rice through Persia Trading. An Iranian chef with twelve years of professional experience in Iran and fourteen in Japan carries those ingredients into kabab, stews and rice preparations grounded in Persian home cooking. Lamb meets direct flame in the grill program while herbs, yogurt, pomegranate and cherry move through preparations whose seasoning favors fragrance and acidity over sheer chile heat. The result is a Hiroo restaurant where Kemestari's life between Iran and Japan connects ingredient sourcing, culinary knowledge and decades of cultural exchange through Persian cooking.
What you should know about Aladdin Hiroo.
Aladdin Hiroo is best known for Asghar Kemestari's unusually long campaign to introduce Iranian food and products to Japan, beginning years before the restaurant became his principal culinary showcase. Kemestari arrived in Japan as a Sony trainee and established a trading office in Ueno in 1981, initially exporting Japanese electrical goods before the strong yen pushed his business toward Persian carpets, caviar and Iranian foods in 1985. Persia Trading developed under Kemestari and his wife Chieko Mabe, with Kemestari personally buying products in Iran and building a portfolio spanning saffron, pistachios, dried figs, dates, pomegranate extract and rosewater. His restaurant career reached still further: Kemestari created Alibaba, described as Japan's first Iranian restaurant, before developing Aladdin as another vehicle for introducing his homeland's food. Aladdin spent a quarter-century in Roppongi, where the operation joined Persian cooking with imported ingredients from Kemestari's trading business before relocating to Hiroo in 2021. Kemestari had spent 45 years in Japan by 2022, giving the restaurant a founder whose professional life had already crossed electronics, international trade and hospitality while maintaining a direct commercial relationship with Iran. An Iranian female chef brought another substantial career into the Hiroo kitchen through twelve years of experience in Iran followed by fourteen in Japan, joining Kemestari's import network with more than a quarter-century of professional cooking. Aladdin Hiroo grew from that uncommon convergence of immigrant entrepreneurship, direct Iranian sourcing and culinary expertise, making Kemestari one of the enduring figures in Tokyo's Persian dining history.
Kubideh kabab brings minced lamb and beef onto skewers over direct heat, concentrating fat and smoke around meat served with rice before jujeh kabab shifts the grill toward marinated chicken. Ghormeh sabzi moves the meal into Persian stew cookery, where herbs, beans and meat develop a darker, slower richness that contrasts with the char of the skewers. Khoresht karafs builds another route through celery and herbs, while Shirazi salad cuts across the cooked dishes with diced vegetables and bright acidity. Lamb leg receives five hours of cooking, producing a substantial preparation whose tenderness gives the meat another character beyond the grill. Aladdin Hiroo draws flame, long cooking, herbs, fruit and rice into the same Persian repertoire, translating the ingredients Kemestari spent decades importing into the dishes that first motivated him to introduce Iranian food to Japan.
How to fold Aladdin Hiroo into your trip.
Aladdin Hiroo works as the restaurant anchor for an afternoon tracing Hiroo through daimyo landholding, imperial philanthropy and one of Japan's foundational collections of modern nihonga.
Begin at Arisugawa-no-miya Memorial Park, where land associated with the Asano family passed to the Nambu lords of Morioka during the Edo period before entering the Arisugawa imperial line in 1896 and Prince Takamatsu's household in 1913. Prince Takamatsu donated 36,325 square meters to Tokyo in 1934, leading to the park's November opening around the anniversary of Prince Arisugawa Taruhito's death. Continue to Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, whose institutional ancestry reaches the Tokyo Municipal Hibiya Library of 1908 before the present central library emerged inside the park in 1973. Its collection has grown beyond 2.32 million books and includes ukiyo-e and Edo Castle architectural drawings, carrying more than a century of metropolitan collecting into Hiroo. Conclude at Yamatane Museum of Art, founded by Yamatane Securities founder Taneji Yamazaki in 1966 as Japan's first museum specializing in nihonga. The collection now numbers 1,800 works, while second director Tomiji Yamazaki assembled 105 works by Hayami GyoshΕ« before the museum moved to Hiroo in 2009. The progression moves from Nambu and imperial stewardship through Tokyo's century-old metropolitan library lineage into the Yamazaki family's sustained patronage of nihonga, revealing the historical, intellectual and artistic depth surrounding Aladdin Hiroo.
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