Issue:
September 2026
Michiyo Nakamoto profiles Tokyu Hotels & Resorts, the FCCJ’s new food and beverage vendor.
Autumn, with its bountiful harvests, is a time for feasting. And as the summer heat recedes and appetites grow, it is an opportune time for the club to welcome Tokyu Hotels & Resorts as our new food and beverage vendor.
Tokyu will bring its culinary and hospitality expertise to the club with service in the Main Bar starting on October 1, and the Pen & Quill later. The new menu will retain some of the club’s long cherished signature dishes while the service is expected to bring together the professionalism of an established hotel group with the friendliness and warmth expected ata members’ club.
With 64 hotels under management and a history that dates back to 1959 when the first Tokyu hotel opened in Ginza, the group is one of Japan’s best known hotel operators. It counts among its iconic hotels the Capitol Tokyu Hotel in Akasaka and the luxury Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel in Shibuya.
“I’m looking forward to bringing my expertise and skills to provide members with a great dining experience,” says Toru Katanosaka, executive chef, who will oversee the food at the club as head chef.
Chef Katanosaka, who hails from Minimi-Izu, in Shizuoka prefecture, began his career after leaving high-school. His family ran a sushi restaurant and Katanosaka’s first job was at a sushi eatery in Yaesu, in central Tokyo.
However, his dream was always to become a western-style chef so after 2 years, Katanosaka changed course and worked for a small café-cum-restaurant before joining Kichijoji Tokyu Inn.
While his specialty is French cooking, Katanosaka, who has 41 years of cooking at various Tokyu institutions behind him, is also comfortable preparing other cuisines.
Chinese cuisine, which he taught himself with the help of a friend who works at a restaurant specializing in food from Shenzhen, is a particular favorite, he says.
This flexibility and creative instinct will serve him well at the club where the food and beverage operations require considerable versatility from both kitchen and dining room staff.
There is casual dining in the Main Bar and more formal dining in the Pen & Quill, both of which serve lunch and dinner. The club’s many events and banquets, servicing up to 300 guests, may require additional staffing.
The club is also keen to hold special events on popular holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas as well as events linked to the seasons or regional festivals.
As a large hospitality group, Tokyu Hotels and Resorts appears well-equipped to meet the challenge of providing the club with its various food and beverage needs.
With a background in hotel restaurants, the Tokyu team has experience in providing a wide range of international dishes on special occasions, ranging from banquets to Christmas dinner.
In addition, 2 of the club’s existing kitchen staff and 5 service staff are expected to stay on with Tokyu and help smooth the transition.
The most popular of the club’s signature dishes will be kept on the menu while new items reflecting changing culinary trends will help update the club’s offerings and make the dining rooms more competitive with the numerous high-quality dining venues in the neighborhood.
“We have been asked to keep certain items on the menu, including fish and chips, so we will keep it. But I would like to make it better so that guests will find it even more delicious,” Katanosaka says.
The Tokyu team is also considering ways in which to enliven the bar area in the Main Bar restaurant, which has more often been used for stacking tableware than for serving drinks.
“I would like to revive that area as a bar,” says Takahisa Kato, General Manager of the Dining Rooms, who will be the acting sommelier for the time being.
Reinvigorating the bar is also an explicit request of Yoshiaki Miyajima, senior managing executive officer of Tokyu Hotels & Resorts, who has been a member of the club since 2013.
One problem, however, is the current pricing, Kato says. A tumbler of the most popular beer – Asahi draft – is Y660, which compares with over Y1,000 at a hotel bar and is even cheaper than what you would pay in a casual izakaya, which is about Y700 to Y800, he notes.
“But …we know that members pay a membership fee and expect to (enjoy drinks at lower prices).” The challenge Tokyu faces is to figure out how to fulfill that expectation, cover its costs, and hopefully, make a profit.
Pen & Quill is also in need of significant changes to improve the ambience, upgrade the culinary offerings and make it more user-friendly. It is a challenge Tokyu expects to tackle within a month or so - just in time for a very special Christmas dinner.
Michiyo Nakamoto is a freelance journalist based in Tokyo who writes about art, architecture, social issues and culture mainly for Nikkei Asia. She was Tokyo correspondent for the Financial Times where she covered Japanese industry, finance, business, politics, foreign affairs and social trends. After a stint in London at the FT head office, she returned to Tokyo and was deputy bureau chief from 2006 to 2013. Her book on the pitfalls of Japanese-style communication in a globalized world was published in Japan in 2017.
