Palace Hotel Tokyo
We spent most of this past summer in Asia. Two and a half months in Seoul first, then on to Japan for a run of business meetings tied to Superegg. The first week of August happened to land on a national holiday there, which gave us an excuse to fold in a real vacation on top of the work trip: Naoshima, Nagoya, Kyoto, all squeezed in before we finally landed in Tokyo, which was really the whole point of the trip.
Of everywhere we stayed, the Palace Hotel Tokyo is the one I keep thinking about — a member of The Leading Hotels of The World, and it shows.
The hotel sits in Marunouchi, which meant we could walk to Tokyo Station in a few minutes and be in Ginza not long after that, no cabs required. From certain rooms you get the Imperial Palace Gardens directly below you and Tokyo Tower somewhere in the distance past the skyline, which is the kind of view that still gets me even after however many hotel views I've seen at this point.
The current building opened in 2012, but the Palace Hotel itself goes back to 1961, and you can feel that history even in a building that's technically new, it's a rebuild rather than a renovation, done carefully enough that it doesn't read as generic five-star anywhere-in-the-world the way a lot of new-build luxury hotels do. The rooms lean into that same instinct: contemporary Japanese design rather than the maximalist European luxury hotel look, and the view does a lot of the work in the ones that have it.
Room size in Tokyo is usually the first thing you sacrifice, so it was a relief to actually have space to spread out after two and a half months of living out of suitcases in Seoul.
The hotel has ten restaurants and bars, which is a lot even by Tokyo hotel standards, and one night we ate at Esterre, the Michelin-starred restaurant done in partnership with Ducasse Paris. It's contemporary French, built around Japanese ingredients rather than imported French ones, which is a distinction that matters more on the plate than it sounds like it should. The room itself is sleek in a way that reads more Paris than Tokyo, and the service was the kind that's easy to take for granted until you're somewhere it's not. We stayed long after the plates were cleared.
Waking up to this view was a dream!
After dinner we went down to the Royal Bar, tucked into the main lobby floor. The counter is a restoration of the original from 1961 — the same one presided over for decades by the hotel's first head bartender, who everyone apparently just called Mr. Martini, which might be the best nickname I've heard all year.
There was a live set going on the first floor while we drank, and the cocktails were good enough that I stopped taking notes on them and just drank them. If you only have one night in Tokyo for a proper bar, this is a reasonable place to spend it.
We went with the Japanese breakfast at Grand Kitchen, though the buffet was tempting enough that I kept eyeing other tables on the way to ours. The room is big, the hotel itself is big, and somehow it still didn't feel crowded, just full of people who all seemed to be having a good morning, which is its own kind of energy.
The hotel does a lot of business meetings, conferences, weddings, that kind of thing, which makes sense once you've seen the amount of event space. The part that actually got me was the Japanese garden wrapped around the property. It shows up from unexpected angles, a guest room here, a hallway window there, the city skyline sitting right behind it like it was staged that way on purpose.
There's also Evian Spa Tokyo on site, massages and facials, and a fitness center if you're the type to keep a routine going even on vacation. We didn't make it to either this trip, though I noted them down for next time.
Merlette Dress, APL Sneakers, Chanel Bag, Azlee Necklace, Cartier Bracelets
One of the actual highlights of the stay had nothing to do with the rooms or the restaurants: there's a whole shopping arcade underground, connected right to the hotel, restaurants and shops selling Japanese snacks, sake, homeware, all good territory for souvenirs.
We hadn't expected to find a 1616 / Arita Japan store down there, Momota Touen, and ended up leaving with several more pieces than we'd planned on buying. They even have a "class B" section, pieces marked as imperfect that, as far as we could tell, looked completely fine.
It's officially one of my favorite hotels in Tokyo, and I'm already thinking about when we'll be back, if only to go find out what Mr. Martini would have made me.
Thank you to Palace Hotel Tokyo and The Leading Hotels of The World for having us.
