Ancient Restaurant Dinosaur: A Modern Meal in the Jurassic
I had come to Ancient Restaurant Dinosaur to eat. The entrance suggested that the arrangement might be mutual.
A giant open mouth surrounded the way in, its teeth framing a passage into the restaurant. Beside it hung a small sign saying “Come in!” Someone had recognised the need for reassurance.
For a dinosaur enthusiast, this was already a promising doorway. For anyone else, it was at least unusually clear where to go: between the teeth.
The restaurant was in Yamato, in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo. Its prehistoric setting extended well beyond the entrance. Even the ground had received attention.
A table in their territory
Inside, the fairly large dining room was surrounded by dinosaurs. Heads emerged from foliage, with bodies and tails occupying the spaces beyond. The tables seemed a small accommodation made for a species that insisted on sitting down to eat.
Knowing they were models did little to make them less enormous. A large head could fill your view, with another dinosaur just behind it. Ordering dinner was a perfectly ordinary thing to do in circumstances that had become quite unreasonable.
The restaurant opened in 2015 with around twenty moving dinosaur robots, complete with calls, as well as flying reptiles overhead. The prehistoric population had been given both floor space and airspace.
There was even a dinosaur you could ride through the hall, though not on the day I visited. The restaurant reported its absences as matters of health. In 2018, the Brachiosaurus was unwell for a time before recovering. In 2019, the Triceratops was injured and could no longer walk around the restaurant. In 2021, the explanation turned mechanical: the ride was suspended for safety, with replacement parts held up by the pandemic. It returned in July 2023.
By 2025, riding a dinosaur also involved paperwork. Rides were for diners with a reservation, and top priority went to those whose birthday fell that month and who had ordered a birthday plate, with official ID to prove it. Anyone who had forgotten their ID was told they could print a copy of their family register or residence record at a convenience store.
Back to the present
Then there was my chicken.
The menu struck me as fairly conventional, and my order looked entirely at home on an ordinary restaurant table. It just happened to be surrounded by enormous reptiles.
In 2017, the restaurant had briefly run a “Time Machine” from Yamato Station. After entering through a giant mouth and taking a seat in their territory, I had found my own way back to the present: chicken with tomato sauce.
But I had been a little too quick to separate the dinner from the dinosaurs.
Birds are the surviving branch of the dinosaur family. The prehistoric connection did not stop at the edge of the table.
It continued onto my plate.
It was a great deal of evolutionary history to contemplate over tomato sauce.
For the duration of the meal, at least, I was at the top of the food chain.
Former location
Former location
Ancient Restaurant Dinosaur — former Daikan location
Permanently closed. This is the former Daikan / Koza-Shibuya restaurant, not the separate Yamato Station branch.
2-16-12 Daikan, Yamato, Kanagawa 242-0025, Japan
About this former location
Permanently closed — the former Daikan restaurant closed on 29 September 2025. The separate Yamato Station branch has also closed. This article records a visit to the former Daikan location in Yamato, Kanagawa.
Visited and photographed on 21 September 2022.
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