Why you should experience Restaurant Bellustar in Tokyo, Japan.
Restaurant Bellustar is a soaring modern French restaurant where Kabukicho's after-dark energy, Munehiro Takesue's disciplined technique, regional Japanese ingredients and contemporary art rise above Shinjuku inside a dining room suspended over the city.
Set within Tokyu Kabukicho Tower near Seibu-Shinjuku Station and just steps from Cine City Square, the 45th-floor restaurant opens beneath a 13-meter-high ceiling with Tokyo spreading across the windows beyond the tables. Shinji Ohmaki's light-based art sends shifting shadows through the vertical volume, while furniture developed with Norman Foster for Karimoku Case brings Japanese woodworking into the room at a quieter scale. Takesue's cooking mirrors that balance through ingredients drawn from different Japanese regions and handled through French technique, allowing the geography of the country to change as the courses progress. The result is a Kabukicho restaurant that places contemporary Japanese food, art and craftsmanship high above the entertainment district below.
What you should know about Restaurant Bellustar.
Restaurant Bellustar is best known for opening on May 19, 2023 as the main dining room of Bellustar Tokyo, with chef Munehiro Takesue bringing more than two decades of French culinary training into a restaurant conceived around traveling through Japan by ingredient. Takesue began his professional career in 2001 as part of the opening team at Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel, developing his foundations at Coucagno under executive chef Nobuhiko Fukuda when the restaurant held a MICHELIN star and later participating in collaborations with international chefs. A move into banquet cooking in 2008 widened his technical repertoire, while competition work culminated in third place at the 2016 Escoffier French Cuisine Competition. Bellustar selected Takesue for its own opening team and sent him to train inside a three-MICHELIN-starred restaurant in Paris before appointing him chef of Restaurant Bellustar. His kitchen subsequently developed regional courses around areas including Tohoku, Chugoku and Shikoku, Hokkaido and Kanto, using French technique to connect producers and ingredients from different parts of Japan with the hotel's travel-centered premise. The dining room adds another creative authorship through Shinji Ohmaki's artwork and furniture developed with Norman Foster for Karimoku Case, while its position within Tokyu Kabukicho Tower places Takesue's cooking inside the 225-meter project designed by Kume Sekkei and Tokyu Architects & Engineers with exterior design by Yuko Nagayama. World Luxury Awards gave Restaurant Bellustar its first honors in 2025, naming it Best Panoramic Views in Japan and Best Luxury Scenic Setting in Asia, adding international recognition two years after Takesue's kitchen opened above Kabukicho.
Takesue's cooking finds its clearest character when a Japanese ingredient keeps its regional specificity while classical French technique alters its texture, concentration and temperature across the plate. Hokkaido yellowtail, for example, receives a brief charcoal sear before fish sauce, olive oil and cashew-based dashi praline deepen the flesh, with radish, ginger and lime bringing freshness against its winter fat. Monkfish follows through tighter construction, wrapped with prosciutto beneath thin bread dough and served with ravigote and anchovy, while Ezo venison moves toward smoke, peppered red-wine sauce and a Narazuke condiment beside seaweed and herbs. Restaurant Bellustar makes those transitions the foundation of dinner, allowing charcoal, curing, fermentation, acidity and French sauce work to reveal distinct parts of Japan through Takesue's precise treatment of their ingredients.
How to fold Restaurant Bellustar into your trip.
Restaurant Bellustar works as the dinner destination after an afternoon tracing Kabukicho through postwar reconstruction, cinema culture and the entertainment ambitions that eventually produced the tower beneath the restaurant.
Begin at Hanazono Shrine, whose history predates the Edo period and whose relocation during the Kan'ei era placed the sanctuary on former Owari Tokugawa garden ground, preserving a religious presence beside streets later rebuilt around entertainment. Continue to Cine City Square, created by urban planner Hideaki Ishikawa during postwar reconstruction as the social center of a district that Kihei Suzuki wanted rebuilt around theaters and entertainment, with the Milano movie theater and Shinjuku Koma Theatre opening nearby in 1956. Conclude at Tokyu Kabukicho Tower, completed in 2023 on the former Shinjuku Tokyu Milano site, where Kume Sekkei, Tokyu Architects & Engineers and Yuko Nagayama developed a 225-meter tower devoted to hotels and entertainment, including theater, cinema and live-music stages. The progression carries Kabukicho from pre-Edo worship through Ishikawa and Suzuki's postwar entertainment ambitions into the tower that now carries those ambitions vertically before Restaurant Bellustar completes the ascent on the 45th floor.
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