Destination Restaurants now has 50 on the map

A restaurant directly operated by the Charo Sheep Farm in the Hokkaido town of Shiranuka, which is regarded as a sacred place by the Ainu people. Handling everything from raising sheep to cooking them, the restaurant even uses offal and other parts that can only be eaten when completely fresh. It offers Italian cuisine made almost entirely with Shiranuka-produced ingredients, including cheese, vegetables and fish.

Opened in April 2023, the restaurant Stanza della Sincerità is part of the tiny three-room hot spring inn Osteria Sincerità in Yamagata Prefecture’s Okitama region. Chef Makoto Harada is attracting attention with dishes created using Yamagata beef and other locally produced ingredients.

This Italian restaurant is located in a house in the midst of a residential area in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. It is particular about serving home-made foods, from cheese to dry-cured ham, and all its pasta is made entirely by hand. Chef Kenji Kawamura uses traditional Italian techniques to turn local ingredients into culinary gems, including dishes taught to him by his grandmother-in-law, an Italian gentlewoman.

This farm restaurant in the Saitama Prefecture city of Kawaguchi opened in the spring of 2021 in an old traditional-style house belonging to the proprietor’s grandfather. Demonstrating the skills he mastered at restaurants in southern France and the French Basque Country, owner-chef Masashi Motooka creates dishes that spotlight vegetables picked from the kitchen garden just before guests’ arrival.

Having become a chef at the age of 27 after time spent traveling around Europe and North Africa, Hozumi Tanaka returned to his hometown of Toyama and opened Himawari Shokudo in 2013. Its second incarnation opened in a new location under a new name in spring 2024. It has won plaudits for its simple yet creative Italian cuisine.

Located half an hour’s drive from Komatsu Airport in Ishikawa Prefecture, this French inn opened in the summer of 2022 in an old elementary school that had closed due to depopulation. The dishes on offer combine local ingredients such as delicacies gathered from the mountains by Chef Shota Itoi and his staff, with sake and kōji mold from the neighboring sake brewery.

The second-generation chef-owner of the Kyoto Chinese restaurant Taiho, Kohki Watanabe, opened this restaurant, serving just one party per day, in the city of Ayabe at the end of 2021. Ingredients include homegrown vegetables and livestock raised on the premises. The dining course starts with the guests themselves wringing the necks of the chickens they are to eat, to bring home the message that food means taking the lives of other living things.

This restaurant was established in the Ehime city of Matsuyama in 1976. Since its 2017 renovation, the sushi chef has been second-generation proprietor Koji Takahira, who mastered the classic Edomae style at Ginza’s Sushi Yoshitake. The menu consists solely of a chef-curated omakase course featuring Shikoku fish and shellfish caught in the Seto Inland Sea and the Pacific, with a primary focus on items produced in Ehime Prefecture.

Proprietor Taizo Hirokado began his culinary journey at Kashiwaya Osaka Senriyama as an apprentice to renowned soba master Kunihiro Takahashi. He then became second-in-command at Ginza Shinohara before opening his own restaurant in his hometown of Beppu in Oita Prefecture. The house specialty is Hirokado-style boneless pike conger eel, from which the bones are removed without cutting them.

This Italian restaurant in the Kagoshima Prefecture city of Kanoya can be reached in 70 to 90 minutes by car from Kagoshima Airport. About 90% of the ingredients prepared by owner-chef Yasuhiko Uchida are sourced from the Osumi Peninsula. Guests will be charmed by dishes that bring out to the fullest the appeal of seafood caught in Kagoshima Bay and vegetables grown in the restaurant’s kitchen garden.