Monkeying Around With Tokyo’s Most Magical Vegan Tasting Menu

Spend enough time in Tokyo, and its quirkiness starts to feel normal.

Maid cafes? A dime a dozen. Tourists zipping through Akihabara in Pikachu costumes and go-karts? Why not. After a while, they pique your interest about as much as your nth onigiri from 7-Eleven or Family Mart.

I’ve spent enough time in Tokyo for its eccentricities to become wonderfully routine, but nothing could have prepared me for this dining experience at Veganic Monkey Magic. Seeing a chef dressed in a full-body monkey costume, complete with unibrow and facial makeup – serving what could very well be the best vegan tasting menu in Tokyo – is so peak Japan.

WHAT IS VEGANIC MONKEY MAGIC?

Veganic Monkey Magic is a reservations-only vegan restaurant in Asakusa, on the first floor of the Oyado Matsumura inn. It’s helmed by Chef Monkey-san, a one-woman show who does all the food preparation and cooking herself.

According to the inn’s website, Veganic Monkey Magic has been open since 2020. It appears to have first opened as an a la carte vegan cafe, before evolving into the plant-based kaiseki restaurant it is today.

Like many restaurants in Tokyo, it’s in a tiny space, with just seven counter seats, so making reservations early is highly recommended. You can do so through the restaurant’s reservation form. Advanced payment is required. At the time of my visit (February 2026), dinner per person costs JPY 6,800.

Veganic Monkey Magic is open for just three nights a week, from Thursday to Saturday. It’s open for lunch and dinner on Fridays and Saturdays, and for dinner only on Thursdays. Aside from its drinks list, there’s no menu at the restaurant. Chef Monkey-san serves a 10-14 course vegan tasting menu based on what’s available that week.

Veganic Monkey Magic is located about a 5-minute walk from Senso-ji Temple. Just navigate to its pin on Google Maps and you’ll find this sign at the entrance of a small alley.

Enter the alley and you’ll soon come across this sliding door to the inn and restaurant.

The restaurant is through that sliding door on the left. You’ll need to take off your shoes before stepping into the hallway.

WHO IS CHEF MONKEY-SAN?

There doesn’t seem to be much information about Chef Monkey-san online, but she’s a one-woman operation who crafts the tasting menus, prepares all the ingredients, and serves diners at her namesake restaurant, all while wearing a full-body monkey costume. A couple of articles referred to her as “Chef Sarucchaman”, but that doesn’t sound like her real name.

Every article I’ve read glosses over the fact that she’s dressed in a monkey costume, which I admit, is what largely drew me to this restaurant in the first place. I have little idea where, how, and why the primate persona began, but one thing was immediately clear – this woman doesn’t monkey around when it comes to plant-based cuisine.

Explaining every course in detail, it becomes apparent that fermentation forms a big part of Chef Monkey-san’s repertoire, as does sourcing quality ingredients from all over Japan and different parts of the world.

CHEF MONKEY-SAN’S MAGICAL TASTING MENU

Before we get into the tasting menu, be advised that Veganic Monkey Magic requires guests to order at least one drink during the course of their meal. Some restaurants in Tokyo will ask you to do this.

Veganic Monkey Magic offers a small selection of beer, sake, whisky, tequila, and other spirits. They have non-alcoholic options as well, like this Nippon Beer Ryoma 1865.

If you’re feeling generous, you’ll have the option of buying Chef Monkey-san a beer. “Beer for Chef” is literally on the menu. She loves beer, but warns customers that she can only drink up to nine in one day. Ha!

I wasn’t exaggerating when I described Veganic Monkey Magic as a one-woman operation. Chef Monkey-san was the only primate person at the restaurant. She does everything from welcoming guests and taking drink orders to preparing dishes and serving and describing them to diners. This is probably why she can only accommodate up to seven diners a night, and advanced payment is a must.

After pouring everyone’s drinks, she served us the first course from tonight’s plant-based tasting menu – carrot potage seasoned with Italian wild oregano.

Next was a hotpot dish of tofu, mushrooms, and leafy green vegetables. Chef Monkey-san set them on burners and asked us to wait about ten minutes for the ingredients to soften and cook.

To season the hotpot, she served us a side of shichimi (Japanese spice mixture) and sesame seeds, which we could grind ourselves.

While waiting, Chef Monkey-san opened a box of cute chopstick rests and asked us to pick one. Of course, I chose the one shaped like a monkey.

Just before she gave us the green light to start with the hotpot, she served us crusty bread with a smear of pate and Cambodian black pepper, along with pani puri filled with yogurt, vegetables, and herbs.

Next up was a small serving of soba. Ever since I transitioned to a more plant-based diet, soba has been my go-to comfort food in Japan.

This next dish was perhaps the most polarizing course from tonight’s tasting menu, simply because it contains an ingredient that many non-Japanese people may not enjoy as much – natto (fermented soybeans). Though exceptionally good for you, natto is sticky, slimy, and has a funky smell, which can put some people off.

You’ll see it in the next picture, but the monaka (mochi wafer) is filled with natto and banana. Chef Monkey-san paired it with a slice of fried sweet potato served with homemade vegan cream cheese on a multigrain cracker.

This is certainly one way to get people to try natto. The sweetness from the sliced bananas made the natto much more palatable. I think serving this with some vegan ice cream would make for an interesting and tasty dessert.

Chef Monkey-san followed the natto with a more approachable dish – grilled onion and tofu marinated with sake and soy sauce.

This next course was perhaps the most interesting from tonight’s tasting menu. It consists of plant-based yakiniku made from konjac and tempeh from Nagano.

Yakiniku is something you’d typically associate with meat, so it was nice to see Chef Monkey-san create her own plant-based version. Texturally, it was clearly not meat, but it was quite tasty so I wish she had served us more of it.

Next was a daikon radish “steak” topped with homemade tartar sauce. It was served with what Chef Monkey-san described as “spring vegetables” and wild grape salt.

This next course consisted of jackfruit sauteed with burdock, onions, and what she could only describe as “rare green vegetables”. It was drizzled in a red wine sauce and seasoned with an “Asakusa spice mix”, which may be a Tokyo-style blend of shichimi.

What you’re looking at here is a crispy, deep-fried maitake mushroom from Niigata served over rice. Meant to fill you up, this was easily the most substantial dish from tonight and my personal favorite. I absolutely love maitake mushrooms.

For dessert, Chef Monkey-san ended tonight’s meal with iyokan from Ehime. We’ve had a few kaiseki experiences in Japan, and almost all have ended with premium fresh fruit. Iyokan is a popular Japanese mandarin-orange hybrid produced mainly in Ehime prefecture.

At the end of our meal, Chef Monkey-san asked each of us where we were from so she could pin our hometowns to her map. If I remember correctly, she’s welcomed guests from over eighty countries. Her goal? Global domination.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON VEGANIC MONKEY MAGIC

Chef Monkey-san served us a total of eleven courses tonight over the span of a little over two hours. She works alone and does everything herself, so lengthy gaps between courses were sometimes unavoidable.

I enjoyed the meal, but I did leave the restaurant a little hungry. Serving a larger portion of rice with the last savory course – in tonight’s case, the mataike mushroom – would have taken care of that. I wouldn’t have objected to a slightly heftier portion of soba noodles either.

Aside from the maitake mushroom, my favorite dishes from tonight’s tasting menu were the konjac yakiniku and natto-banana monaka. The carrot potage was nice too. Overall, I found this to be a good, solid meal that had its moments. Based on its overwhelmingly positive Google reviews, people from around the world seem to enjoy it.

I think what makes a meal at Veganic Monkey Magic truly special, is Chef Monkey-san herself. After all, it isn’t everyday you have a vegan tasting menu lovingly prepared by a chef in a monkey costume!

Monkey persona aside, the chef underneath the costume seems like a lovely human being who genuinely cares about serving good food that’s beneficial to both you and the planet. In a city like Tokyo, where plant-based restaurants are still relatively few and far between, that’s something vegan visitors can certainly look forward to.

Be sure to check out our article on the best vegan restaurants in Tokyo for more recommendations.

Before you leave the restaurant, you may want to check out the few items Chef Monkey-san has for sale. I didn’t take a closer look, but I did notice this gachapon machine with unique Veganic Monkey Magic souvenirs. For JPY 500, you can get one of three magnets or a keychain.

Disclosure

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