Why you should experience Casa Tequila Tokyo Kabukicho in Tokyo, Japan.
Casa Tequila Tokyo Kabukicho is a spirited Mexican restaurant where Kabukicho's after-dark character, handmade corn tortillas, blue-agave tequila and cooking shaped through Mexican culinary mentorship bring the energy of a taco counter into a subterranean Shinjuku dining room.
Set along Sakura-dori near Yasukuni-dori and just steps from Shinjuku Toho Building, the restaurant descends through two basement levels of Shinjuku Toshin Building into a room modeled on a tequila distillery, with brickwork, neon and wall imagery devoted to the spirit's production. A central comal anchors the taco preparation, heating house-made corn tortillas and their fillings in direct view of diners through a setup conceived around Mexican street stalls. Mexican beef and pork, ripe avocado, chile, cilantro and fresh fruit carry the same culinary direction from plates into margaritas and tequila cocktails. The result is a Kabukicho restaurant where tacos prepared across a comal and an extensive agave-drink program give Mexican food a distinctive place inside Shinjuku's late-night dining district.
What you should know about Casa Tequila Tokyo Kabukicho.
Casa Tequila Tokyo Kabukicho is best known for opening on March 14, 2016 as Bourbon House's expansion of the Mexican cooking and tequila program previously developed through Koenji Tequila House. Executive chef Kuniaki Yokoo began cooking professionally during his teens at Prince Hotel, rose to second-chef rank and encountered Mexican cuisine during his thirties before training under Mexican Embassy chef Maria Sanchez. Yokoo subsequently helped launch Koenji Tequila House and became Bourbon House's executive chef, overseeing Casa Tequila Tokyo alongside the company's festival and Tex-Mex operations. Okinawa-born manager Ricardo Yuki Yaga grew up familiar with Mexican food, moved to Tokyo, joined Yokoo during the Koenji project and later developed Bourbon House's food-truck and music-festival businesses alongside his work in Kabukicho. The 2016 restaurant placed a comal at the center of its taco station, cooking house-made corn tortillas directly on the rounded iron surface before adding beef, chicken, pork, avocado or seafood. Blue-agave tequila supplied the other half of the original concept, joining Mexican beef and pork on a menu built explicitly around food and agave spirits. Menudo later earned the top honor in Tamori Club's international offal-stew competition, giving the chile-braised tripe soup a television distinction within a repertoire extending through mole, pozole, ceviche and tostadas.
Tacos begin at the comal, where corn tortillas made in-house meet a choice of beef, chicken, pork, avocado or seafood before salsa brings acidity and chile into the warm masa. Mexican beef moves beyond the taco station as steak, putting the meat itself at the center of the plate, and chicken cooked in mole shifts toward a dense sauce of chile and chocolate with Mexican rice alongside it. Menudo develops another register through beef tripe simmered with Mexican chile, followed by pozole with corn and chicken or ceviche sharpened with lime and cilantro. Avocado cheese croquettes bring a crisp shell around a creamy center, a Bourbon House creation that also became part of the company's music-festival repertoire. Fresh fruit enters the bar through margaritas and other tequila cocktails, placing bright citrus and fruit against the roasted agave character of the spirit. Casa Tequila Tokyo Kabukicho lets the meal move naturally between masa, chile, avocado, slow-cooked meat and tequila, with the comal providing a clear culinary center from the first taco onward.
How to fold Casa Tequila Tokyo Kabukicho into your trip.
Casa Tequila Tokyo Kabukicho works as the dinner destination within a Kabukicho route connecting a postwar entertainment district planned around theater, the cinema complex that restored film exhibition to the neighborhood and the Shinto sanctuary whose performing tradition predates modern Shinjuku.
Begin at Cine City Square, where postwar district leader Kihei Suzuki pursued an entertainment quarter organized around a central plaza surrounded by theaters and cinemas. Shinjuku Koma Theater and Shinjuku Tokyu Cultural Hall opened around the area in 1956, and the Kabukicho Construction Monument erected in January 1957 still commemorates the redevelopment led by the Shinjuku First Reconstruction Land Readjustment Association. Continue to Toho Cinemas Shinjuku, opened on April 17, 2015 with 12 screens and 2,300 seats on the former Shinjuku Koma Theater site. The adjoining Shinjuku Toho Building placed a 12-meter Godzilla head above its eighth-floor terrace, and Shinjuku Ward appointed the Toho character a tourism ambassador eight days before the building opened. Conclude at Hanazono Shrine, whose origins precede the Edo period and whose sanctuary moved to its present area during the Kan'ei era of 1624-1644. Repeated fires pushed the shrine toward fundraising performances known as Sanko-in Shibai, where theater, puppetry and dance established a local entertainment lineage centuries before Kabukicho emerged nearby; wartime destruction claimed the shrine buildings before the present sanctuary rose in 1965. Casa Tequila Tokyo Kabukicho closes the progression back among Kabukicho's evening streets, where Yokoo and Yaga brought the Koenji-born Tequila House project into Shinjuku in 2016.
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