Inside the eye-catching turquoise entrance of Ahinama Ueno in Taito district's Higashiueno, owner Roberto Miro Luaces -- clad in a bright red apron -- is busy baking and serving Cuban sandwiches.

Ahinama offers a wide variety of fillings to heap into the soft fluffy Cuban bread, such as beef, chicken, ham and shrimp. The most popular choice on the menu is El Cubano, which features a plentiful serving of pulled pork.

The sandwiches are made fresh upon order. Luaces slices open a Cuban loaf and toasts it in a special grill that makes the bread crispy all over.

After coming to Japan in 2001, Luaces worked as a professional dancer for about 10 years as he has loved to dance since a child and enjoyed entertaining others. "I've performed on stages around the country: Sapporo, Sendai, Niigata, Nagoya, Kyoto, Okinawa and so on."

"Decide on what you want to do and go explore different experiences," he says. "Life is fascinating as good things and bad all come along the way."

Chef Olmos Xoja starts the day's preparations at 8 a.m. Once the ingredients are ready, he heats flaxseed oil and sunflower oil in the special pot and then puts in 12 pieces of lamb about the size of an adult's fist and adds onions and carrots on top.

While waiting for the meat and vegetables to cook, he chops coriander and samples the soup to adjust the taste. At around 10:30 a.m., he adds rice grains into the pot with a long spatula and then covers it with a lid.

Meanwhile, in the oven, samsa, a flaky pastry dough wrapped around meat and vegetables, is being baked to perfection, filling the eatery with its appetizing aroma.

At Diner Vang in Miyoshi in Koto district, chef Tran Viet Hoang prepares the pho bo by pouring hot beef bone broth into a deep bowl filled with rice noodles and topped with thin slices of raw beef.

Manager Le Thi Ha explains that the noodle soup, made with the broth, onions, cinnamon, star anise and other ingredients, "takes 24 hours to make."

The signature sauces used in other dishes on the menu, such as Vietnamese fresh spring rolls and banh mi, are also made from scratch.

In addition to Vietnamese soy sauce and Sate Tom chili oil, the restaurant also uses Japanese sugar, vinegar and other condiments.

"As these come in different levels of sweetness and sourness (from Vietnamese products), we make adjustments to the recipes we learned in Vietnam," says Le, who hails from Thanh Hoa province in northern Vietnam.

Clad in his white chef's shirt and signature orange apron, Jean Bosco is always a cheerful beam of sunshine for patrons when they visit Bistrot Quatre Avril, a French restaurant in Shinagawa area's Nishigotanda that specializes in cuisine from the south of the European nation.

Stepping into Babusya Rey in Kichijoji in the west Tokyo city of Musashino, customers are greeted by the bright smiles of owner Yukinori Ogasawara and his wife Viktoriia. Working alongside the couple are Viktoriia's parents, as well as her sister and brother-in-law who evacuated from Ukraine to Japan in the spring of 2022.

The food at Babusya Rey, which opens only on weekends and national holidays, is prepared by the whole family. For example, Viktoriia's father is in charge of dicing the ham and vegetables for the Olivier salad while her mother prepares the ingredients for the chicken kyiv. Viktoriia and her older sister Yevgeniva take charge of the frying.

 "We pound the chicken breast meat to 5 millimeters thick and wrap it around frozen herb butter," Viktoriia explains as she demonstrates how to prepare the chicken. "Then we coat it with egg, flour and breadcrumbs a few times, and it's ready to be fried."

"Everything is made at home by the family from Donetsk. Even the varenyky dumplings are made from scratch, starting with the dough," says Yukinori. "Viktoriia's parents make their rounds to the butchers and grocers on their bicycles to buy the ingredients, and they make the dishes for customers the same way as they would when cooking for family."

It is 9:30 a.m. and owner chef Mete Resat Kupcu is already busy preparing for the day in the kitchen at Turkish Cafe & Bar Dogal in Shinagawa district's Nakanobu.

At Dogal, Turkish meatballs known as kofte that Kupcu makes are a popular choice. He grinds the beef in a meat mincer and kneads until it becomes sticky. As he kneads, Kupcu sometimes gives the meat a punch. "That's to get the air out," he says.

"Kofte comes in different shapes and tastes depending on the region, such as the Tekirdag region, the Inegol region, and so on," says Kupcu, who himself hails from Niksar in northern Turkey.

The kofte at Dogal is served in an elongated cylinder form of the Tire region. It is pan-fried in butter and eaten with yogurt and tomato sauce.

Kupcu is also busy coming up with new dishes to add to the menu. "First, I make it and see how everyone reacts after they try it. Then I contemplate what is missing and find my taste as I adapt the recipe with my own touches."

Positive feedback and advice from restaurant staff member Konomi Miyakawa is also indispensable -- not just on the taste but also the amount of meat, how it is served, what vegetables to go with it and the color of the utensils. For Kupcu and Miyakawa, their constant goal is to come up with new ideas to enable customers to enjoy their food.

At restaurant De Afrique in Setagaya area's Okusawa, Yonas Woldemichael puts the finishing touches to a traditional Ethiopian dish comprising of injera, a pancake-like flatbread with a slightly spongy texture of about 50 centimeters in diameter, and various colorful toppings known as wat.