A Look Back at Destination Restaurants 2025 (Part 2) – Two Memorable Restaurants Offering the Experience of “Receiving Life”

Launched by The Japan Times in 2021, Destination Restaurants lists outstanding restaurants in Japan, chosen with international diners in mind. Having completed our coverage of the 10 restaurants selected in 2025, the fifth year of Destination Restaurants, we now present Part 2 of a two-part report on the year’s culinary currents.

We reported in Part 1 that the process of selecting the top 10 restaurants of 2025 revealed a trend of increased competition among dining establishments in certain regions, with Toyama and Ibaraki as notable examples — and, at the same time, strong collaboration among chefs in these regions, resulting in the emergence of many fine restaurants. In Part 2, we will take a look at two of the most memorable restaurants covered in 2025.

In Japan’s regional areas, there are many restaurants with their own vegetable fields, and quite a few chefs who forage in the mountains for wild plants in spring and mushrooms in autumn. But few dining establishments run their own livestock farm and center for processing game meat and carry out every step from meat production to cooking in the manner of Elezo Esprit in Hokkaido, the Destination Restaurant of the Year for 2024. Two of the restaurants that transform life — animals such as sheep and chickens — into meat, and then into refined cuisine, were listed as Destination Restaurants for 2025.

Farm Restaurant Cuore in the Hokkaido town of Shiranuka, an area where Ainu culture is deeply rooted, is attached to the Charo Sheep Farm, which pastures about 800 sheep on its 15-hectare site and processes and sells the meat. The restaurant Inaka no Taiho, located next to the poultry producer Hasugamine Farm in the Kyoto Prefecture city of Ayabe, was created with the guiding concept “an open-air restaurant next to a farm.” Shortly before the course menu is served, a chicken from the farm is slaughtered with guests’ assistance and then becomes the main ingredient in the meal they experience.

Both restaurants make full use of their close proximity to a meat production site, offering dishes that include meat and internal organs from every part of the animal, with nothing wasted. Farm Restaurant Cuore’s menu features meat from sheep in various periods of growth, from lamb to mutton, as well as organs such as brain, sweetbreads, heart and kidney. At Inaka no Taiho, owner-chef Koki Watanabe points out each part of the chicken to guests while processing the bird, saying, “These are the lungs, this is an egg before its shell has hardened” and so on.

Tasting such unusual organs in a state of extreme freshness that cannot be experienced in cities far from the production area is a special culinary event in itself. More than that, it sparks a new awareness of the fact that living is receiving life. This might be called the essence of gastronomy — something much more than merely “delicious.”

ジャパンタイムズが主催する日本発信のレストランセレクション「Destination Restaurants」。2025度の傾向を振り返るレポートの後編をお届けする。

地方では自家畑をもつレストランも多いが、食肉の生産を行う店は限られる。そんななか2025年度は北海道白糠郡白糠町で約800頭の羊を育て、羊肉の加工や販売を手掛けている『茶路めん羊牧場』併設の『ファームレストラン クオーレ』がリストイン。さらに、養鶏も手がける『蓮ヶ峯農場』の隣に店を構え、コースを出す直前に、ゲストとともに生きた鶏を締め、さまざまな部位をメインの食材にする京都府綾部市にある中国料理店『田舎の大鵬』が選出された。

産地から離れた都市部では決して味わえない鮮度の、珍しい部位を味わうことは、それだけで特別な食体験だ。そして同時に「自分が生きるために、他の命をいただく」ということを改めて認識することになる。

そこには「おいしい」だけでは語ることのできない、ガストロノミーの本質があるように思える。

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