MAZ

Section 1·The Reservation

I booked MAZ from Seoul. A friend who had been living in Tokyo strongly recommended it, and when the 2024 Michelin Guide Tokyo was announced, I was convinced. A first-time listing that had skipped one star entirely and gone straight to two. The first South American restaurant in Japan to earn that distinction. The moment my April trip to Tokyo was set, I put in the booking.

Section 2·Central in Tokyo

MAZ is the Tokyo outpost of Central, the Lima restaurant that topped the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2023, the first time that honour had gone to Latin America, and the first time it had gone anywhere outside Europe and North America. Its culinary director, Virgilio Martínez, opened MAZ in July 2022. At the time of my visit, the head chef was Santiago Fernández Saim, Venezuelan by origin, trained at the Basque Culinary Center after leaving for Spain at seventeen, then through Michelin three-star Aponiente and Cocina Hermanos Torres before spending five years at Central heading its creative programme. In 2023 he was named to Forbes Japan's 30 Under 30. MAZ was his room.

Section 3·Behind the Plaque

The restaurant is on the third floor of Tokyo Garden Terrace Kioicho, a short walk from Nagatacho station. No signage faces the street. A single Michelin two-star plaque marks the entrance.

Inside, the space is dark and modern, without windows, so I imagine it would feel much the same even by day. There are six to eight tables, and the room is smaller than I expected.

Before being shown to the table, guests are led to a standing display.

The South American ingredients used across the menu are laid out together while a member of staff talks you through them: Kiwicha, Chaco, Brazilian Nuts, Macambo, Copoazu. Names I had not heard before. All I could do was nod, but that unfamiliarity felt like a preview of the evening's language.

Each course on the menu is listed with an altitude. MBSL for depth below sea level, MASL for height above it. The progression runs from -20 MBSL at the ocean floor to 4,150 MASL in the Andean highlands, nine courses climbing vertically.

This framework comes directly from Central, and it is not merely a decorative device. Peru contains the Pacific coast, the Amazon basin, and the Andes within a single national territory. The argument is that its geography is its larder. In Tokyo, that argument is made with eighty percent Japanese ingredients and twenty percent imported from Peru.

Before each course, a small square of paper arrives first. Its texture, imagery, or photograph is meant to represent the concept and sensibility of what is coming. It is not a device that directly affects the taste of the food, but it shows how the restaurant has designed the meal.

Section 4·The Pairing Question

The pairing is 18,000 yen. For that price, the selection did not deliver what the figure implied. The wines were trendy South American naturals, but look up the bottles afterwards and they sit in the twenty to thirty dollar range. These days the pairings at newer restaurants that draw attention for their creativity often disappoint, and MAZ did not escape that tendency. Unless you are set on drinking, I do not think it is an option worth choosing. The non-wine pours are another matter. Distinctive South American drinks such as fermented oca and Peruvian liqueurs appear across the courses, and if they intrigue you, they are worth trying once.

Section 5·The Ocean

The courses begin underwater. MARINE REEF, -5 MBSL: sea urchin, clams, and seaweed combined with South American spices.

The Japanese ingredients arrive fresh and then something unfamiliar is laid over them. From the first course, the method is clear. I enjoyed the dishes.

FIELDS IN THE COAST, 18 MASL: a yellow prawn cracker with cream.

Little memory of it remains at this distance.

It was ordinary, and that is what I retain.

COLD SEA WATER, -10 MBSL: abalone concealed beneath a fried element shaped like jungle vegetation, with coriander and tropical spice worked through.

You break it apart and eat it together. The aromatics were distinctive, yet nothing about them put me off. The pairing, a Chilean Semillon, suited the dish's unusual aromatics well.

Section 6·The Highlands

EXTREME ALTITUDE, 4150 MASL: two preparations together.

A corn fritter with a cheesy aroma,

and a lamb tartare in a stone vessel with purple sweet potato and quinoa.

The South American-style vessels were striking.

The presentation was very polished, and personally this was a course I enjoyed.

ANDEAN FOOTHILLS, 1825 MASL: rainbow trout with mountain greens and roasted sweet potato.

To be frank, the presentation was not appetizing. It looked like food handed out by a jungle tribe in a film like Indiana Jones.

The flavour matched the visual: unremarkable.

What stayed instead was the pairing. Oxalis Tuberosa, known as oca, is an Andean root fermented into a kind of wine. Tasting something made from a crop you have never encountered is interesting in itself. Frankly, it did not taste good. Its unfamiliar aroma and flavour felt awkward to me.

Section 7·The Sea Returns

OCEAN HAZE, -20 MBSL: the best dish of the evening.

Octopus and squid with grilled seaweed,

the texture and aroma of each element fitting the others with precision.

Before it arrived, the utensils came presented inside an octopus-shaped ornament. The flavour does not change for it, but the object lodges the course more firmly in memory. This was the moment I became convinced that MAZ, working with Japanese ingredients, is at its strongest with seafood.

This was the moment I became convinced that MAZ, working with Japanese ingredients, is at its strongest with seafood.

WOODS IN THE HIGHLANDS, 3260 MASL: beef short rib in braised form, with sauce and thinly sliced grilled vegetables.

Oca returned as a side preparation, cooked this time in a South American earth oven.

The chef brought out photographs and a book to explain how the method works in the field. The explanation itself was a well-made piece of theatre.

The beef, compared with the seafood courses before it, was plain. It did not draw out the qualities of the ingredient. It did not taste very different from the braised short-rib-style beef you find just about anywhere in the world.

Section 8·The Close

The desserts came in two courses. HIGH JUNGLE RAINFOREST, 750 MASL: a drink of mead with a beeswax cube placed in it, alongside a caramel donut and a chocolate-shelled dessert concealing strawberry and acai berry ice cream.

The ice cream was good.

AMAZONIA, 840 MASL: a spread of cacao-centred chocolate preparations,

accompanied by a tablet presentation in which a staff member walked through the origins, varieties, and processing of the cacao used.

It was the first time I had encountered audiovisual materials used this way at a restaurant.

The pairing here was Matacuy ELIXIR ANDINO, a Peruvian liqueur made from sugarcane and various plants, darker in colour than expected.

Barely two or three of the staff appeared to be Japanese. The rest were South American, European, or mixed, and the room ran entirely in English. The sommelier looking after me was Dutch. Towards the end of the courses, I mentioned that I would be in Amsterdam in May and asked if he had suggestions for wine bars or restaurants. He spent several minutes writing, then handed over a sheet of paper filled on both sides. Thanks to that note, I had two memorable evenings in Amsterdam.

Nine courses in two hours. The pacing is fast, and with the various experiential devices layered across the meal, the evening can feel compressed. Yet those devices, the ingredient table, the paper cards before each course, the tablet presentation, the earth oven demonstration, show that the restaurant intends something beyond simply serving food.

Looking back, MAZ was most itself with seafood. The meeting point between Japanese ingredients and Peruvian philosophy was sharpest in the sea, and that strength shone at the heart of the meal. In the end, it was in the sea that the language of altitude, carried 20,000 kilometres from Lima, read most clearly on Tokyo's ingredients.

In the end, it was in the sea that the language of altitude, carried 20,000 kilometres from Lima, read most clearly on Tokyo's ingredients.