Japan Times Selects This Year’s Destination Restaurants

By Sakurako Nakagawa Tokyo, May 26 (Jiji Press)–The Japan Times on Tuesday announced this year’s winners of the Destination Restaurant awards, a selection of 10 exquisite eateries in the Japanese countryside. Amid the popularity of gastronomy tourism–trips whose purpose is to sample local specialties–10 top-quality restaurants have been chosen as Destination Restaurants annually since 2021 from among restaurants located outside Tokyo’s 23 special wards and ordinance-designated major cities. The award judges since the start of the program are Yoshiki Tsuji, headmaster of Tsuji Culinary Institute, Naoyuki Honda, an entrepreneur and Leverage Consulting Inc.’s president, and Takefumi Hamada, a restaurant reviewer and Access All Areas Inc.’s CEO. This year’s award-giving ceremony was held in the Azabudai Hills commercial complex in Tokyo’s Minato Ward on Tuesday afternoon, honoring the chefs of the awarded restaurants. Of the 10, the Destination Restaurant of the Year 2026, which is chosen as a symbol of the “spirit and trend” of restaurant nowadays, was given unanimously to Kesennuma Kuromori, a Chinese restaurant specializing in shark fin cuisine, in the northeastern prefecture of Miyagi. The port city of Kesennuma, where the restaurant is located, is known as the country’s largest producer of shark fin. The city is one of the places devastated in the March 2011 major earthquake and tsunami. In a speech, Yoji Kuromori, chef of the restaurant, talked about his two purposes–showcasing the sustainability of shark fin cuisine, which is often criticized from the perspective of animal protection, and attracting people to Kesennuma to help its recovery from the disaster. “I’ll keep working on serving dishes that can only be tasted at Kesennuma,” he said. “I started the restaurant to create food culture in my hometown, where people come to see the famous Mount Fuji,” Kohei Horiuchi, who runs innovative restaurant Notori in the village of Oshino in the central prefecture of Yamanashi with his elder brother, said on receiving a Destination Restaurant award. “I hope Notori will become a reason to visit Oshino, rather than just to see Mount Fuji.” “To come to Tokyo this afternoon, I had to leave my house around 4:30 a.m. today,” Toshiharu Sunayama, chef of Sen, an innovative restaurant located in the small riverside village of Yoshino in Nara Prefecture, western Japan, said with a smile. “I am so glad that customers travel this far to taste my dishes.” Judge Honda said that the Destination Restaurants awardees, whose total number reached 60 this year, have formed a “great community of top chefs in Japan.” “I hope various chefs will share their experiences and knowledge,” he also said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]