Akasaka has spent a century perfecting rooms built for entertaining, and The Public Red is the district's current translation of that craft: a gastropub where ten screens face every seat and the kitchen refuses to treat match night as an excuse for bad food.
The premise sounds simple and is rarely executed this well. Most Tokyo sports bars ask you to choose between the screen and the table. The Public Red, which sits on the first floor of a quiet block at 3-11-8 Akasaka, three minutes from Akasaka-mitsuke station, was designed so that no seat in the house misses the action. Japan Travel notes that all ten large monitors can be seen from any seat, backed by a sound system tuned for the roar of a stadium rather than the drone of a television.
The room
This is the polished end of the Tokyo sports bar spectrum. Dark tables, proper chairs, warm lighting that flatters both the food and the company. The crowd is a working Akasaka mix: government and agency people early in the evening, an international football crowd as the European kickoffs approach, and a late shift that takes advantage of closing hours that stretch to 5am every night except Sunday. It feels closer to a gastropub that takes sport seriously than a screen warehouse with taps.
What to order
Time Out Tokyo describes the kitchen as serving English pub food with a Japanese twist, and that is the order of play. The fish and chips is the benchmark dish, made with locally sourced ingredients rather than freezer stock. The steaks are the upgrade pick when a match runs long. On the drinks side, draft beer does the heavy lifting, with a highball the historically correct Tokyo choice for a long night in Akasaka, a district that helped make whisky and soda the city's default session drink.
Who it is for
Visitors staying between Roppongi and the Imperial Palace who want Premier League, Champions League, or Nippon Professional Baseball without the volume of a chain pub floor. Groups who want to eat properly during the game. Anyone whose match kicks off at 4am Tokyo time, because almost nowhere else in the district will still be serving when the final whistle goes.
Best time to go
Weeknights from 7pm for a relaxed dinner crowd and an easy table. For marquee European fixtures, arrive an hour before kickoff or call ahead on 03-5545-3953; the room fills predictably for big matches. Sunday closes earlier, at 3am, which still outlasts nearly every bar in the neighborhood. For more rooms like this, see our ranking of the best sports bars in Tokyo, our wider Tokyo bar guide, and our editorial on where to watch the game in Tokyo. For the format worldwide, start with our global sports bars hub.
Sources
Reporting for this profile draws on Time Out Tokyo, Japan Travel, Tabelog, and Tripadvisor.
