“Destination Restaurants 2024” selected by the Japan Times

A meat-based culinary community carries on Tokachi’s pioneer spirit

From among the 10 Destination Restaurants 2024 honorees, Elezo Esprit, which has created a new culture of meat-based cuisine, was chosen as the Destination Restaurant of the Year 2024.

About an hour’s drive from Tokachi-Obihiro Airport, Elezo Esprit is located in Toyokorocho in Hokkaido’s Nakagawa district. The area lies at the mouth of the Tokachi River, which supplies water to the region’s vast plains. The small hill on which the restaurant is situated faces the Pacific Ocean.

After the end of the Edo Period, when the Meiji government was moving ahead with Hokkaido’s development, this area was the starting point for the opening up of the Tokachi wilderness, so it is known as the “birthplace of the Tokachi region.” The area has cool summers and relatively light snowfall, and many residents work in dairy farming, agriculture and fishing.

Toyokorocho is known for its symbolic Harunire Tree (two Japanese elms that are fused together and look like a single tree), and lucky visitors may encounter the crystal-clear Tokachi River ice known as “jewelry ice” that is seen along the seashore from mid-January to mid-February. Encompassing one city (Obihiro, the airport’s location), 16 towns and two villages, the Tokachi region comprises 13% of Hokkaido’s land area and has a population of about 330,000. With a calorie-based food self-sufficiency ratio of over 1,100%, it is also an area rich in nature’s bounties.

Elezo Esprit’s owner-chef, Shota Sasaki, gained experience in French cuisine at a Hoshino Resort restaurant in Karuizawa and Bistro de la Cite in Tokyo. In 2004 he returned to Obihiro, where he helped out at his family’s cafe-restaurant. One day Sasaki had an opportunity to butcher, cook and eat the meat of a deer that had been shot by a hunter who frequented the restaurant. The experience made a deep impression on him. As a result, he came to the realization that “eating is the act of receiving life,” and resolved to engage with meat-based food culture in an essential way.

In 2005, Sasaki established the business Elezo for meat processing and distribution in Obihiro, his hometown. At first Elezo focused entirely on processing wild game obtained from hunters and selling the meat wholesale to Tokyo restaurants. Sasaki established strict rules for the handling of game animals, including specific hunting methods and the time needed to transport animals to the processing center after hunting. The meat produced by Elezo gained a following and the company’s achievements increased.

Looking toward his next goal, in 2009 Sasaki moved his activity base to Otsu in Toyokorocho, a depopulated area with fewer than 200 residents. There he built a comprehensive meat-processing laboratory on a 14-hectare site that includes mountains. He also started raising game fowl and ducks and pasturing pigs on the grounds of the facility. Through unique methods seen nowhere else in the world, such as hiring hunters as regular employees, Sasaki is creating a new meat-based culinary culture.

In 2022, Sasaki opened Elezo Esprit, an inn-style hotel made up of three accommodation buildings. The main dining room has six counter seats. The restaurant, which offers a course menu for ¥28,000 ($185), is open to hotel guests and nonguests alike, but overnight guests currently make up 90% of its customers. (One night’s stay with two meals starts at ¥55,000.) Dinner begins with Ezo venison consomme, which Sasaki calls “the soup of life.” Meats made on the premises, including assorted charcuterie and roasted pastured pork and venison fillets, are presented in simple and refined ways. Meat dishes of equivalent quality can be enjoyed at an Elezo Group restaurant located in Toranomon, Tokyo. But the cuisine experienced here, where pigs and fowl that live on the premises can be transformed into the dishes’ ingredients without a moment’s delay, is another matter completely. This is truly the taste of life itself. “We mustn’t waste a single drop of blood,” Sasaki said. The dishes at Elezo Esprit should be savored with these words in mind.

Kawaba village in Gunma’s Tone district is home to one of Japan’s “sacred mountains” and the birthplace of Ventinove’s chef-owner, Yusuke Takeuchi. After closing his popular Tokyo restaurant, he opened Ventinove in Kawaba in 2022. It is known for meat dishes showing the skills, from butchering to cooking, that he acquired at a famous restaurant in the Tuscan countryside.

This Italian restaurant is located in the Tateshina Highlands, in the foothills of Mount Yatsugatake. Chef-owner Noriyuki Usui trained in Italy, not only at a restaurant but also in a prosciutto workshop. Ca’enne’s specialty is its prosciutto, made in a workshop that was established nearby. Guests are also served firewood-cooked cuisine enhanced with the aromas of freshly picked herbs, as well as handmade pasta.

Chef-owner Kenichi Nishi was deeply impressed by the quality of the fish at Sasue Maeda Fish Shop in Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, and relocated from Hiroshima to Yaizu in 2022 in order to create French dishes making full use of the extraordinary freshness of this fish. Nishi continues to develop and refine his cuisine, including the “fresh fish pie” that has been his signature dish since before his move to Yaizu.

Shintaku was established in 1867. After honing their culinary skills in Kyoto, brothers Shinsuke and Ryota Yamagai took over the family business in 2008, with Shinsuke becoming the restaurant’s fifth-generation head chef. Most of the ingredients they use are produced in Murakami — not just the salmon for which the city is famous, but also meat and seafood, vegetables, rice and sake.

Kentaro Mura is the fourth-generation owner-chef of this Japanese restaurant, which opened in 1911. After closing the business in 2018 to refine his skills further at Japanese restaurant in Tokyo, Mura reopened the Toyama restaurant in a new location in October 2022. Ebitei-Bekkan offers exquisite dishes featuring ingredients from Toyama and elsewhere in the Hokuriku region, paired with well-matched wines.

Ipponsugi Kawashima is currently closed, as the 93-year-old building it occupies — a former fountain pen shop designated a Tangible Cultural Property — was damaged in the Noto earthquake on Jan. 1 and is not in usable condition. Owner-chef Toru Kawashima distributed meals to earthquake victims after the disaster, and is currently engaged in a crowdfunding effort with a view to the restaurant’s reopening.

Occupying a traditional house on the outskirts of Matsusaka, Shibousai Kitagawa offers “Chinese cuisine that is gentle on the stomach,” serving just one group of diners per day. Using local products such as Ise-ebi lobster and Matsusaka beef, owner-chef Yoshihiro Kitagawa single-handedly carries out the entire process from stocking ingredients to putting the final touches on dishes. This restaurant is now booked up one years in advance.

Enowa is a multipurpose complex combining a restaurant with a hot spring, sauna and lodging accommodations. Executive chef Tashi Gyamtso, who gained experience at the restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns near New York City, moved to the area three years before Enowa’s opening to grow vegetables and make other preparations. The cuisine created in Yufuin by this native of Tibet has gained considerable attention.

Mauvaise herbe

Secret location therefore there is no official Google entry.
The address is: 263 Zakimi, Yomitan, Nakagami District, Okinawa 904-0301, Japan.

Owner-chef Keiji Ojima, who had long garnered many fans with his catering business, opened this restaurant on the main island of Okinawa in 2021. Except for some seasonings, all the ingredients used in the omakase (chef’s selection) menu are produced in Okinawa. Communicating directly with producers, Kojima brings out the full potential of Okinawan ingredients in his cuisine.