Gastronomy from the fields of Yufuin

At the inn-style retreat Enowa, each of the 10 villas and nine guest rooms is furnished with an outdoor hot spring bath. It is located in Oita Prefecture, Japan’s “onsen prefecture,” which boasts both the largest number of hot spring sources and the highest yield of spring water. The Yufuin district of the city of Yufu is well-known for its branding strategy as a luxury onsen resort and as a city planning model for cities planning to become tourist destinations.

Until the prewar period, Yufuin was mainly a farming village. In the 1970s, a group of local ryokan inn managers, inspired by an observation visit to Baden Baden, Germany, promoted a tourism plan that would enable their businesses to survive by preserving the area’s natural environment. They have succeeded in attracting customers by resisting large-scale development, instead operating small and medium-size inns focusing on quality food and service. Enowa, which opened in June 2023, has had a significant influence in the district. This is because executive chef Tashi Gyamtso has created the first innovative cuisine in Yufuin, and a new reason for Japanese and overseas tourists to head to the area.

Gyamtso was born and raised in a mountainous area of Tibet that is 3,000 meters above sea level. There, self-sufficiency in growing vegetables and raising cattle is the norm. “Pasturing the cows was my job,” he said. “We were farming people, and we bartered for necessities with our relatives, who were nomadic people.” His family relocated to New York in 2008. After graduating from university, he pursued a career as a chef in earnest. Starting in 2015, he worked for four years, eventually becoming co-executive chef, at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant near New York City that promotes the “farm to table” philosophy. Widening his culinary horizons further, he trained at renowned restaurants in Europe and Japan, and even at a sake brewery to study fermentation. He arrived in Yufuin in 2020, three years before Enowa opened, and began preparations for the restaurant by cultivating its fields.

“The environment of Yufuin and the owner’s concept of ‘offering cuisine in which just-picked vegetables grown in our own field play the starring roles’ aligned with what I aspired to do myself,” said Gyamtso.

Currently about 200 different vegetables and herbs are grown each year in the neighboring 10,000-square-meter field, without the use of pesticides. Gyamtso and the restaurant’s staff members participate in the farm work under the guidance of agricultural adviser Teruhisa Ishiwari of Ishiwari Farm in Kyoto, who has earned the support of famous chefs. Based on the concept of “local production for local consumption” and with an eye to the future, they create dishes born of the soil.

Dinner at Enowa’s main dining room, Jimgu, begins in the greenhouse, where a fresh vegetable appetizer is served amid the aromas of the herbs grown inside. The dishes that follow also feature an abundance of vegetables, combined with fish and meat from Oita. In early summer, the vegetables include asparagus and fava beans. All of them are vividly flavorful. The style of cuisine may be different, but Gyamtso’s philosophy of staying close to the land perfectly matches that of his predecessors in the district who have brought new vitality to Yufuin.