DESTINATION RESTAURANTS
Destination Restaurants now has 50 on the map
Presented by The Japan Times since 2021, Destination Restaurants seeks out Japan’s best restaurants beyond big cities, selected by Japanese experts with international diners in mind.
In mid-2024, a guidebook on the 40 restaurants listed from 2021 to 2024 was published to great acclaim. In the fall, NHK’s current affairs program “Close-Up Gendai” featured culinary tourism and showed affluent foreign tourists visiting restaurants that had been included in the list.
Even in areas of Japan suffering depopulation, just a single standout restaurant can draw in tourists, and the economic impact of such restaurants will only grow. Culinary tourism, in which visitors try to experience a region’s culinary culture and heritage, is estimated to now have a global market size of ¥100 trillion ($700 billion), and Japan’s regional restaurants — and the Destination Restaurants list itself — are clearly growing in prominence.
Destination Restaurants 2025, the list’s fifth annual installment, features 10 new entrants, bringing the total to 50. The judging panel of Yoshiki Tsuji, Naoyuki Honda and Takefumi Hamada remains unchanged. Eligible restaurants can be of any genre but must lie outside of Japan’s major cities.
Selections are based on three principles: that the true expression of Japan’s land and climate is to be found in its regional areas; that it is important to unearth unique local talents; and that Destination Restaurants must be different from other rankings.
This year, Kurumasushi in Ehime Prefecture on Shikoku has been added to the list, meaning that now all 10 of Japan’s major regions are represented: Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Tokai, Hokuriku, Kinki, Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu and Okinawa.
With the list growing to 50 restaurants, a new map of Japan’s culinary scene is emerging more clearly. And yet many great restaurants still haven’t been selected yet, and many prefectures still don’t have an entry in the list. We hope that by 2030, when the list will have grown to 100 restaurants, there will be at least one from each of Japan’s 47 prefectures.
Himawari Shokudo 2
The Destination Restaurant of the year 2025
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.
Hokkaido
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.
Yamagata prefecture
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.
Ibaraki prefecture
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.
Saitama prefecture
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.
Ishikawa prefecture
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.
Kyoto prefecture
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.
Ehime Prefecture
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.
Oita 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.
Kagoshima Prefecture
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.
Destination Restaurants was launched by The Japan Times in 2021 as a list of the best restaurants in Japan, selected by Japanese experts with international diners in mind. As in previous years, Yoshiki Tsuji, Naoyuki Honda and Takeshi Hamada have kindly judged the 4th edition, Destination Restaurants 2024, and selected 10 top-quality restaurants from across the nation.
Destination Restaurants was launched by The Japan Times in 2021 as a list of the best restaurants in Japan, selected by Japanese experts with international diners in mind. As in previous years, Yoshiki Tsuji, Naoyuki Honda and Takeshi Hamada have kindly judged the third edition, Destination Restaurants 2023, and selected 10 top-quality restaurants from across the nation.
Destination Restaurants is a list of Japan’s best restaurants published by The Japan Times. Started in 2021, the list is selected by Japanese experts with an international audience in mind. Our three judges from last year, Yoshiki Tsuji, Naoyuki Honda and Takefumi Hamada, are back again and have selected 10 restaurants from all over the country.
The restaurant scene in Japan has entered a new era, with diners seeking unique experiences and cuisine that cannot be found elsewhere.
At the forefront of this trend are restaurateurs linked closely to the sources of their ingredients, turning the natural blessings of their surroundings into innovative, delectable fare.
Each year, the members of our expert panel recommend 10 establishments, with the aim of introducing readers to authentic cuisine prepared with great care and imagination.
The Japan Times Destination Restaurant of the Year 2021 is Cuisine régionale L’évo.
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