Outside the old gate of the Yoshiwara — Edo's licensed pleasure quarter — there once stood more than twenty houses serving sakuranabe: "cherry-blossom pot," horse meat simmered sukiyaki-style, the stamina dish of the floating world. One remains. Nakae, founded 1905, run by the fourth generation of one family, in a wooden building raised by shrine carpenters in 1924 and now a nationally registered cultural property.
What you eat
Horse — leaner and cleaner than beef, from mature animals raised for the house at a dedicated farm — cooked shallow and fast in a soy-and-miso broth, pulled at rosy medium-rare, dipped in raw egg. The tartare is called Taro-Taro yukke: the artist Okamoto Tarō, a regular, asked the third master to recreate the horse tartare he ate in France, and the dish still carries his name. The closing move: egg folded into the sweet broth over rice, which the house itself calls the best thing it serves.
The Noren View
This is the most bookable table in our collection — and one of the most storied rooms. What you're reserving is not scarcity but context: the gate, the willow, the last house standing. Go with the history in hand (the master himself leads walking tours of the old quarter), and dinner becomes a chapter of Edo you can taste.
Who should go
Culture-first travelers pairing Asakusa with the old north — the Ichiyō museum, the streetcar line, the lanes the guidebooks skip — and anyone curious what "stamina food of the floating world" actually meant.