5 Best Restaurants in Shikoku, Japan

Weekend lunch and the prix-fixe dinners are outstanding—and a good value—at this special place serving French- and Italian-inspired bistro-style cuisine. The food and presentation are excellent without being snooty, and the softly worn wooden interior is funky yet not crass or grimy. Try the beef with red wine sauce or grilled sea bream. Sit upstairs and strike up a conversation with your neighbors or the gracious hosts.

This modern izakaya-style Japanese restaurant on the same small street as the Agnes Hotel (near Tokushima Station) specializes in skewers of flame-grilled chicken, beef, pork, and seafood. The vast menu also includes hot-pot stews, fresh seafood dishes, and tempura items, and there's plenty of local sake to wash it all down. Sit at the counter and chat up the friendly chef and the regulars or, for a quieter meal, ask for a table in the back.

Find your favorite fish in the pool at Tenkatsu, and it will be on your plate a few minutes later. You can sit close to the action at the big black countertop, or dine on tatami with sunken horigotatsu tables. The interior design here hardly overwhelms, but the food more than makes up for it. Plastic displays and picture menus help you choose your non-fish dishes, or you could opt for a plush course (but going a la carte is much cheaper if you aren't ready for a big meal). Nabe hot pots in autumn and winter are house favorites, but they also serve local specialties like honetsukidori grilled chicken thigh.

Meals here range from simple lunchtime bento boxes to the lavish fish platters that are a Kochi specialty. The staff will recommend the local favorite katsuo (skipjack tuna)—in Japanese it's sasuga Kochi, "just as you'd expect in Kochi"—but consider the shabu-shabu meat and vegetable combinations, which your servers will teach you to cook on a special table in your private tatami room. Be careful with seating; the first floor is a bland cafeteria, so indicate that you want an upstairs room instead.

The simmering energy of a cantina thrives in this three-story izakaya, where tanks full of eels and fish wait to be selected for your plate, and the chefs do a dazzling job preparing them. The other Japanese fare is also top-notch. An evening here is especially lively if you get a counter seat in front of the chefs. You will find Uo Ichiba Komatsu in a street shooting off the Marugame-machi arcade.