Yukimoto Iida

柚木元 YUKIMOTO

😍Grilled matsutake mushrooms😘

The most expensive mushrooms from Japan😁

😋松茸～マツタケ～まつたけ😍

松茸蘑菇

송이버섯

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Wild unagi feast @yukimoto_iida
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柚木元
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Some of you may have heard my rants about the shrooms at this place, but here it is again. Out of the 4 or 5 "ingredient highlights" in a given year, matsutake is perhaps the most uninteresting for me... alongside white truffles.. a lot of restaurants feel the need to serve it because it's kind of cool, but at most places, I enjoy it as much as I do a normal shroom. The good thing is that this place has figured out how to cook them properly, preserving the aromas while still making them tasty as hell. Multiple dishes utilise the magic mushrooms and in the end, we usually finish with some kind of game meats.. resulting in a perfect balance. Fair enough, it is expensive as f and its freaking far, but with the selection of the product bar none, coming from local sources not far from the restaurant, execution is on point and it leaves nothing else left to the imagination. Singularity.
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Spring season @yukimoto_iida — super fresh asparagus harvested just a few hours ago, hana sansho, bamboo shoots, bear, boar etc. always nice to be back •
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3rd Kuma nabe in 3 days, can never get enough of this.. also on the menu: bear brain, deer heart, wild duck, badger etc. @yukimoto_iida
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The ultimate expression of Matsutake, unmatched mastery. @yukimoto_iida
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Eel and turtle feast at @yukimoto_iida — some of the tastiest wild eels ever. The suppon sashimi dish was quite hardcore, felt like a turtle anatomy lesson •
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in nagano, japan (june’24)

so happy i finally got to try yukimoto, one of the highlights this trip. it was one of those places where i thought their gold award was truly deserving with no faulty dish and a breathe of meat and cooking served in our course today.

began with a marinated veggie platter, with an ayu senbei and a mutton soushi. followed by an onion dashi, made with kombu, kabu which was so simple, but so sweet. really loved the local nagano style ohaki meat pocket, stuffed with veggies and pulled pork, before panfried so outside was crispy.

ayu harumaki was also surprisingly good, they fried the head on its own, before stuffing it into the spring roll with the body which removed all the bitter taste. suppon was a bit tough, maybe as its still too early on in the season. but extremely happy to have gotten a spring bear nabe, with burdock, chives, egg and takenoko, as well as a homemade chilli sauce on the side. this unique spring bear feeds off kinome and strawberries, so the meat itself is soft and sweet, as opposed to the winter bears which focus on the high levels of fat. off-menu shime is highly recommended if they offer it, their mutton curry and the mutton miso ramen, wish i had the stomach for a second bowl cuz it was so so good.

really really love this place, except for its extremely hard to get to and suburban location. would definitely be back for matsutake and gibier soon.

六月スペシャルコース (~¥30,000)
✨前菜 starters
✨新玉葱、蕪と昆布だし onion in dashi
羊肉のたたき lamb tataki
✨豚、山菜のおはき pulled pork pocket
ザリがにの茶碗蒸し crawfish chawanmushi
✨あゆの春巻き ayu springroll
豆とじゃがいもの揚げ出し peas & potato fried tofu in dashi
焼きすっぽん、紫バジル grilled suppon, basil
✨小熊の鍋: ごうぼう、たけのこ、卵、チャイブ spring bear hotpot with burdock, takenoko, egg, chives
✨マトンと野菜カレー mutton veg curry rice
✨マトンの味噌らーめん mutton miso ramen
✨梅とミルクの最中 ume and milk monaka
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would revisit: yes
reservations online
price range pp: ¥30,000-¥60,000
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📍柚木元 YUKIMOTO
location: 2-21 towacho, iida, nagano
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#2feastingpigs_nagano
#2feastingpigs_japan Less

Bear, dear, duck, hakubishin etc.. — The best game meat restaurant in Japan during the height of game season @yukimoto_iida
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Winter game season at Yukimoto — bear brain, Shiga heart, bear shabu shabu… reminded me of my first visit a couple years ago. One of the best gibier restaurants in Japan, just a bit too difficult to get to..•
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Been looking forward to the matsutake meal at Yukimoto since last season, this place definitely does it the best!•
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Yukimoto 柚木元 in spring — huge asparagus freshly brought in directly from the garden 30 minutes before lunch; tender and juicy Valais blacknose sheep; and next level bear nabe with bear meat, tongue and dumplings. Looking forward to mushroom season! @yukimoto_iida
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Another one of my #TravelForFood favorites, great place for game meat. The texture of the raw deer heart was unbelievable, and there’s nothing more satisfying than finishing a meal with kuma nabe and ramen. •
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Yukimoto 柚木元 2nd visit — no game this time but best matsutake meal so far. Matsutake here were partially grilled and partially steamed in order to retain moisture, so that the texture was juicy and crunchy. The smaller size also means more intense flavor. •
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柚木元
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Impressive game-driven cuisine which may test the resolve for some people. Bear brains, tongue and other funky cats full the unique menu. There is rumoured to be an entire bear carcass lying in their fridge across the street but I haven't been able to verify this 😁😁 outstanding execution and definitely worth the long journey there. 4 hours door-to-door... looking forward to the next one
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I have had a lot of very good meals in Japan, but rarely as interesting and at the same time delicious.
However, before I go further I need to tell a little story. In the summer I stayed in the 別荘 (weekend house) of a friend of mine in Karuizawa. Relying on the geo location of Tabelog I made a reservation in a highly rated restaurant apparently close to my own location. Shortly before the meal time I tried to find out how long it would take me to get there, only to find out it was like three hours away because even though it was close as the crow flies, it was a long way by car. So completely humbled I had to call to apologise that I will not be there in about 20 minutes. Graciously the Chef agreed to waive any cancellation charges if I come again. So, of course I had to, and not only did I not regret it, I loved it.
This restaurant is in Iida in the Nagano prefecture. The Highway Bus from Tokyo takes about 4 hours, the train about 6 hours, so I decided on a hybrid, Shinkansen to Nagoya and then a rented car to Iida. The restaurant is fairly large and caters to the locals at a very good price and has a high end option which is definitely worth a try.
As mentioned above, you can easily eat very well in Japan, but not every time it is also interesting. One of my favourite places serves 15 nigiris, always the same, for more than 20 years. I love it, but I know what is coming before I even sit down.
This pace is unusual and aggressive.
The first dish was a deer brain, deep fried with lotus. WOW. This is certainly a statement for a first dish. The sweet fat of the brain was perfectly balanced with the crunchiness of the lotus.
The Chef followed this up with a sesame tofu in boar soup with Shingiku and Kabu (turnip). Wonderful umami in the soup, the tofu crispy on the outside and soft inside. This was a short reprieve.
Next up, we got deer sashimi, but not cut waiver thin but one centimetre thick. Served with daikon and mountain vegetables. Soft, melting and incredibly tasty. They explained that they only use deer shot above 1000 metres (they are in the middle of the Southern Alps in Japan) those animals have less fat, but when grilled the iron comes out too much so they need to serve it raw, as one would!
To continue we had raw deer heart with quail egg. The heart had less crunchiness as you normally would get but combined with the quail egg became a total umami bomb.

Now if anyone bothers to go back to what I just wrote, where on earth do you get hit with these kinds of “challenging” dishes as early in a menu and being so satisfied with what you got. Unbelievable!

A Nagano prefecture soul food is Oyaki, a stuffed dumpling, this one was stuffed with wild boar. Hot, soaking and very savory. Another great dish.
The first meat course was a duck with a hamburger made out of the intestines of the duck and in a sauce distilled out of the bones of the duck. As always in Japan, for me it's a little on the well cooked side, but nevertheless very delicious.
To continue the theme from above, the next dish has the inner core of a wild boar tongue served with fried noodles made of a very rare mushroom (Kotake) and potato. I had a lot of tongues in my life but few were as good as this one.
As if we did not have enough right now, we move into another highlight. Wild boar belly in sweet and sour sauce. A little Chinese echo here, but the rendered fat of the wild boar is as tasty as the best pork belly you can get but somehow is much lighter to eat. The fat is not as prevalent and you love to eat it, even at the end of the menu.
Little did I know that there is more. After the short intermezzo of Yuzo flakes from the tree in front of the restaurant we move into the “main course”. The Kuma nabe. The white flesh of the kuma, again only from animals shot above 1000 metres, cooked in the same soup we had at the beginning made out of wild boar.
Wonderful melted fat, with Matsumoto negi to add acidity and texture, a great combination.
At this point only the traditional rice dish was coming. A garlic fried rice with Kuma fat. Another wonderful dish, comfort food, loads of umami.

At this point everybody had already succumbed to magic produced by the kitchen.

What a wonderful meal, not only was every dish really good, but one has to admire the guts of the Chef to hit you with brain, raw deer and raw deer heart in rapid succession and one sits there and loves it. What audacity?

Well, I said my piece, nothing more left to add.
I’ll be back (to quote a famous country man).
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Hotpot of badger meat

穴熊鍋

熊鍋と同じ熊パイタンスープに、穴熊肉を投入。

雑食動物らしい香りは若干あるが、同時に漢方を思わせるスパイスやハーブの香りもするのが驚き。

2020年12月

Yukimoto (Iida, Nagano)
長野 飯田「柚木元」

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