Aca 1°

Paella carried from Kyoto to the counter

The paella course still carries Kyoto in its grain. Tetsuo Azuma, chef-owner of Aca 1° in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, works from a Spanish vocabulary shaped by Japanese seasonality, a method he began forming after training at La masa and in Spain. Okayama-born and Kyoto-raised, Azuma founded Aca 1° in Kyoto in 2013, then moved the restaurant to Nihonbashi in August 2020. The relocation did not turn the work into a Tokyo translation of itself. It brought the same discipline to a smaller field of view, where the counter puts the chef, the rice, the seafood and the guest into one line of attention.

His role here is not only authorship. It is presence at the station. Aca 1° is built around a Spanish-Japanese omakase tasting menu, with the progression led from the counter rather than hidden behind the room. Azuma’s cooking keeps Spanish form in conversation with Japanese ingredients: gazpacho can meet uni, kohada can sit on a tostada, sobrasada can be reworked through the lens of what the season allows. The signature paella, carried over from the Kyoto era, is the clearest statement of continuity. It is not nostalgia. It is a dish kept on the tools long enough to survive a move.

A Spanish method held to Japanese seasons

The menu at Aca 1° follows a tasting format, but its structure feels closer to a pass than a procession. Courses arrive as decisions: acid against fat, cured fish against crisp bread, rice held until the room has earned it. The restaurant’s stated approach is seasonal, and the cooking turns on that constraint. Spanish technique gives the frame; local sourcing and Japanese ingredients set the day’s pressure.

The counter has 12 seats, which matters to the method. At that scale, timing is not an abstraction handed from kitchen to floor. It is bench-side work. A tostada with kohada asks for the fish, the bread and the seasoning to meet at the moment of service. Uni gazpacho depends on temperature and texture as much as flavor. The paella course gathers more time into the pan, drawing from the restaurant’s Kyoto years while sitting inside a Tokyo service. Beverage service stays close to the food, with wine, sake and Champagne forming the restaurant’s curated program rather than a separate performance.

The room keeps the pass in view

The room is minimal and counter-only, with low lighting and a quiet register that leaves little to distract from the sequence of dishes. Formal service here does not mean distance. It means the staff keeps the movement measured, so the chef’s work at the pass remains legible. Plates do not need theatre when the guest can see the station.

That intimacy changes the sound of the meal. The counter gathers small noises: a pan set down, a glass placed without hurry, the scrape and lift that come with service at close range. The atmosphere is calm, but not inert. A 12-seat room asks everyone in it to pay attention, including the hands doing the cooking.

A second platform, not a departure

In 2024, Azuma opened Shokudo aca at Azabudai Hills as a more casual second venue and a platform for the next generation of Spanish chefs. That context gives Aca 1° its sharper outline. Nihonbashi remains the concentrated station, the place where the Spanish-Japanese tasting menu is held to the counter and the paella from Kyoto still marks the arc of the meal.