élan vital

Sushi hands in a projected room

The menu begins before the pass, with preference and appetite set in advance. Kazunori Maeiwa, chef at élan vital in Yoyogi, Tokyo, brings sushi-trained hands to a modern French room built around projection, sound, and the table as a working surface. His early apprenticeship sat with the Sushi Takumi group, before a move into the kitchen at Sushisho Masa. Since 2019, he has also held the owner-chef role at Sushi Akira, a second station that explains part of his discipline here: fish handled with restraint, seasoning that listens for the edge of salt, and a willingness to let temperature do quiet work.

élan vital asks that training to move in a different register. The restaurant is known for a private, single-party format and an immersive French-Japanese tasting menu, where the kitchen folds dashi, miso, yuzu, kombu and Japanese produce into sauces, reductions and composed courses. Maeiwa’s public standing now runs across both addresses, but this room gives his method another surface. The knife work and sequencing learned in sushi meet a service built around theatre. The hand still has to be exact.

Courses measured against light and sound

The technical signature here is the 5D dining structure: projection mapping moves across the table and walls, ambient music shifts by course, and bespoke 3D-printed tableware becomes part of the setting. The kitchen does not run an à la carte rhythm. It works through a tasting menu shaped to the guest, with preferences settled before the meal rather than corrected midstream.

The cooking stays anchored by recognizable craft. Roasted beef tongue is one of the house signatures, served as a main course with a seared surface, a yielding interior, burdock root, and tomato sauce. Foie gras terrine sits closer to the French side of the bench. Other courses bring in seafood, dashi work, yuzu, kombu, miso-brown butter, matcha and seasonal fruit, depending on the progression. The projection mapping dishes can make the room feel playful, but the pass still depends on timing, sauce texture, and the temperature at which a bite reaches the table.

The room as part of the station

The room is dim and quiet, closer to an atelier than a conventional dining room. The counterpoint is movement: images crossing the table, sound cues, drawers and small surprises folded into service. In Yoyogi, inside a residential stretch of Shibuya-ku, élan vital uses intimacy as a practical tool. With one group in the room, the kitchen can hold the tempo of the menu without splitting its attention across competing tables.

That scale changes the way the craft reads. A sauce reduction, a piece of tableware, a visual field and a final sweet course arrive as parts of the same pass. The dining room does not replace the bench; it extends it. Maeiwa’s work here is most legible when the spectacle settles and the course in front of the guest is simply roasted beef tongue, cut cleanly and served at the pace of élan vital.