A company owned by the family that founded Shiseido has opened a seafood French restaurant called 1864. in the basement of its own Ginza building. The kitchen belongs to a chef who spent 37 years at L'Osier, the French restaurant Shiseido runs.
1.In the basement of FUKUHARA GINZA, an 11-storey building on Chuo-dori in Ginza 7-chome, there is a French restaurant with 14 seats. Its name is 1864. (Ichi-hachi-roku-yon). It opened its doors in February 2026 and announced its official launch on April 21. The seating is an eight-seat counter wrapped around an open kitchen, plus one private room for six. There is a single course, the Menu Dégustation 1864, at 35,200 yen including tax, with a service charge on top.
2.The door opens at 5:30 pm and last orders are at 8 pm. It is closed on Sundays, Mondays and public holidays. Last September, when the MICHELIN Guide previewed ten new Tokyo restaurants ahead of its next edition, this was one of them.
3.The operator is Fukuhara Corporation. It is the family company of Arinobu Fukuhara, who founded Shiseido, and it is also the landlord: in 2011 it tore down the old building on this plot and rebuilt it. Floors one to four hold Shiseido's store, SHISEIDO THE STORE. The same basement room used to be 1864, open to members only, and the company has now opened that door to the public.
4.The name is a year. In 1864 Arinobu, who grew up in Tateyama in Chiba, left for Edo to study Western pharmacy. The Western-style pharmacy he opened in Ginza in 1872 was the start of Shiseido. At the bottom of the stairs is a deep blue door, and the MICHELIN write-up says the colour comes from the sea of his hometown. The course carries a theme to match: a journey that sets out from the sea of Tateyama.
5.Inside, the palette is grey and rose gold. Ryu Kosaka designed the room, lining the walls with silver leaf and hanging glass lights low. Wood, leather, stone and glass share one space. At the counter, only a slab of stone separates the guest from the burners, and diners in the private room can draw back a curtain to watch the kitchen.
6.The course runs to seven stages. The opening plate described by Tabelog Magazine is hairy crab caught off Hokkaido after the drift ice retreats, set as a mousse, topped with shellfish jelly and ribbons of carrot, and ringed with a curry-scented sauce. The cold jelly reaches the tongue first, the sweetness of the crab follows, and the curry cuts that sweetness off at the end.
7.Tilefish from Nagato in Yamaguchi is wrapped in scallop mousse and roasted, then topped with caviar and finished with a fennel sauce. The mousse wraps the fish in a layer that keeps the flesh from drying as it cooks. Salty caviar and the anise note of fennel settle over the mild white flesh. A poached egg gets a red wine sauce and a side of chickpea fries. The drinks list also carries the house's own tea blend, 1864.TEA COLLECTION No.64.
8.Chef Izumi Yamashita was working part-time at L'Osier, Shiseido's French restaurant, as a student when Jacques Borie noticed him. Borie, who holds the M.O.F. title (Meilleur Ouvrier de France), ran that kitchen from 1986. Yamashita skipped the usual two or three years in service before entering the kitchen and held a knife from day one. He stayed after Borie left, and his time there came to 37 years.
9.L'Osier reopened with a new chef for its 40th anniversary in 2013 and has kept three MICHELIN stars for eight years running. The dinner courses listed on a booking site run from 23,000 to 39,000 yen. The 35,200 yen at 1864. lands right in the middle. Someone from the same kitchen is serving French food at the same price within the same block of Ginza, yet the guest gets something different. Eight seats in front of the chef instead of a large dining room, and classic technique learned under Borie instead of a French chef's new cooking.
10.At the same price, why would a guest go down to fourteen seats in a basement? The MICHELIN write-up also describes the place as carrying on Borie's cooking. For Ginza diners who remember L'Osier in the Borie years, plates served right in front of them by the man who kept that kitchen for 37 years are reason enough. On top of that comes the story: the year the founder left home, a door the colour of his hometown sea, the street where Shiseido first opened. It is told by the family itself, not by a corporate advertising department, and it carries more weight for that.
11.The fourteen seats turn only once a night. With last orders at 8 pm there is no time for a second sitting, and with Sundays, Mondays and holidays off, the restaurant opens about 20 days a month. Even full, it tops out at 280 guests a month.
12.Spending per guest is put at around 50,000 yen: the 35,200 yen course plus a 10% service charge and wine (estimate). At 70% occupancy that is 196 guests and 9.8 million yen a month, or roughly 118 million yen a year.
13.Seafood French cooking carries heavy ingredient costs. With hairy crab, abalone, ise-ebi spiny lobster and caviar in one course, the cost ratio is set at 33% even with drinks mixed in, or 3.2 million yen. Four in the kitchen including the chef and three on the floor including the sommelier come to 3.5 million yen in labour. Basement shop listings in Ginza 7-chome run at about 50,000 yen per tsubo a month, so 30 tsubo means 1.5 million yen in rent, plus 1 million yen for utilities, flowers, linen and card fees. That leaves 600,000 yen, or 6% of sales (all estimates).
14.On these numbers the break-even point is 64% occupancy. Each guest leaves about 33,500 yen after ingredients, so covering 6 million yen of fixed costs takes 179 guests a month. But when the landlord runs the restaurant, the 1.5 million yen in rent stays inside the family. Take that line out and break-even drops to 48%, and for shoppers heading to the Shiseido store upstairs, the basement adds one more name to the building: the founder's restaurant.
15.Shiseido sold food early for a company that sold medicine. In 1902 it put a soda fountain serving soda water and ice cream inside its pharmacy, and that became today's Shiseido Parlour. In 1973 came L'Osier. Both have been run by Shiseido the corporation, and 1864. is the first French restaurant opened by the founding family rather than that company.
16.A Ginza landlord family opened up a basement room it had kept closed for members and handed fourteen seats to a chef with 37 years at L'Osier. Turning once a night, those fourteen seats sell about 9.8 million yen a month (estimate), and if market rent is paid, 6% is left over. A building owner in Korea doing the same in their own basement would hit fire rules first. A basement general restaurant counts as a multi-use business from 66㎡ of floor area, which means a simplified sprinkler system and emergency exits, and that construction cost lands even on a single 30-tsubo room.