Why you should experience Nandhini Toranomon in Tokyo, Japan.
Nandhini Toranomon is a spirited South Indian restaurant where Nishi-Shinbashi's mercantile character, regional cooking, spice-driven preparations and a chef collective forged in India bring the foodways of the subcontinent's south into Central Tokyo.
Set along Shin-Tora-dori near Hibiya-dori and just steps from Toranomon Hills, the restaurant occupies a street-level dining room with a wood-deck terrace that carries the meal directly toward the broad avenue connecting Shimbashi and Toranomon. Pale blue and white interiors give way to tables crowded with steel thalis, bowls and broad dosas, while the scale of the menu allows Andhra, Telangana, Tamil and Kerala preparations to meet within a single sitting. Lunch can unfold through multiple curries, rice, breads, lentil preparations and chutneys before dinner expands the kitchen's reach across a far wider collection of regional dishes. The result is a Nishi-Shinbashi restaurant whose physical ease opens onto an unusually deep account of the chefs and South Indian traditions behind the food.
What you should know about Nandhini Toranomon.
Nandhini Toranomon is best known for bringing Christaiah Ramanaiah and eight South Indian chefs who had spent a decade training together into a restaurant created around the cooking they knew from home. Ramanaiah was born in Andhra Pradesh and entered restaurant work as an apprentice after finishing school, later developing his craft in restaurants in Bengaluru before moving to Japan in 2005. He became head chef at a South Indian restaurant in Tokyo, and his tenure from 2009 through 2014 coincided with that restaurant reaching first place in Tabelog's Indian category. Independence followed in 2016 through SRIRAM, and the Toranomon restaurant opened on April 5, 2017 along Shin-Tora-dori as the second Nandhini location after the original Kiyosumi-Shirakawa restaurant founded in 2015. The eight-chef team shared ten years of formative training dating back to their youth, giving the new kitchen a professional history that preceded its Tokyo opening by years. Their repertoire was conceived with unusual breadth, spanning South Indian regional cooking, vegetarian preparations and Indo-Chinese traditions across a dinner collection that reached 150 dishes soon after opening. Tabelog later selected Nandhini Toranomon for its Asian/Ethnic Tokyo 100 in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026, extending Ramanaiah's earlier recognition into the restaurant he built under his own direction.
A South Indian meals set brings the kitchen's breadth onto one steel platter, allowing sambar's lentil-and-vegetable depth to meet rasam sharpened by tamarind, chile, garlic and black pepper as successive spoonfuls run into basmati rice. Poriyal adds vegetables and pulses before coconut chutney supplies a cool, creamy register that can be folded through rice or carried onto crisp fragments of dosa. Masala dosa shifts the progression toward fermented batter cooked into a thin, brittle-edged crepe, its potato filling softening the spice as sambar and chutneys alter the balance with successive dips. Biryani drives the meal toward aromatic basmati and deeper chile heat, with raita bringing cool dairy back across the rice before the next forkful. Nandhini Toranomon turns the table into a sequence of mixing, dipping and recombination, allowing lentils, tamarind, coconut, fermented batter, rice and spice to reveal why the founders built the restaurant around the breadth of southern Indian cooking.
How to fold Nandhini Toranomon into your trip.
Nandhini Toranomon works as the lunch anchor for an afternoon tracing Edo fire protection, early Japanese broadcasting and maritime faith through the historic institutions surrounding the Toranomon and Atago districts.
Begin at Atago Shrine, commissioned by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1603 atop 26-meter Mount Atago as protection against fire and disaster, before Magaki Heikuro's horseback ascent under Tokugawa Iemitsu gave its 86-step approach the enduring association with advancement. Continue to NHK Museum of Broadcasting, opened on Atagoyama in 1956 as the world's first museum dedicated to broadcasting, preserving equipment and programming across Japan's progression from radio through television, satellite transmission, high-definition broadcasting and digital media. Conclude at Toranomon Kotohira-gu, whose history connects the maritime worship of Konpira with the commercial district around Toranomon, carrying a religious tradition associated with sailors and safe passage into the administrative heart of modern Tokyo. The progression moves from Tokugawa fire protection through the technological history of Japanese broadcasting into maritime faith, revealing layers of belief and invention embedded around Nandhini Toranomon.
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