Fujiya Honten Wine Bar Featured

One of the best things to happen to Shibuya's wine bar scene, Fujiya Honten Wine Bar is a great example of how to get everything right.

Located across 246 from Shibuya Station, Fujiya Honten is a tachinomi (standing only) wine bar with a style all it's own. Evenings typically find the small venue full of wine-sipping patrons, chatting and enjoying tapas-style dishes from the tiny kitchen. Visitors can choose from 20 or so wines by the glass or order a bottle from the extensive wine list (printed on a bound stack of hand-designed, laminated cards).

Prices are very reasonable, with bottles starting at 1,600 yen and wines by the glass from 500. While a few premium wines are available, the bulk of the list consists of good-value wines priced between 2,500 and 3,500 yen. There is very little markup over retail, and the best thing is that you can actually take unfinished bottles of wine home with you!

If it sounds more like a liquor shop than a wine bar, well, that's what it is, or rather, was. In 2005 the owners of this then-nondescript sake shop decided to roll the dice and turn it into a standing wine bar instead. The gamble paid off, and now the wine bar is as popular as their original location nearby, a more conventional beer-and-sake standing washoku-ya. Today the bar is busy most evenings, with 70-80% of their customers regular visitors who return week after week.

With standing wine bars like this one you often have to lower your expectations for the food menu, but at Fujiya Honten that's never a problem. Tapas and izakaya-style dishes are plentiful, cheap and very, very good. There is an English menu which lists most of the standard, regular dishes, but the daily/weekly food menu is scrawled in Japanese on chalkboards that line the upper walls all around the room. Taking the time to read through it is certainly worth the effort, as there is where you'll find the most interesting and seasonal offerings.

Fujiya customers are friendly and--as with with most tachinomi-ya--conviviality is the rule. It's easy to start up a conversation with the person or people next to you, and if you like talking about wine there is a good chance the other person does, too.

Fujiya Honten Wine Bar is a Vinotokyo favorite, and if you don't know the place already you're encouraged to go check it out. Not many places offer the same combination of great food and wine, low prices, convenience and fun.

Open 17:00 to 23:00, Monday through Saturday. Little English spoken.