Dining · Kanazawa
Asadaya
A Kanazawa family that carried the Kaga domain's freight for two centuries now runs a tiny ryotei inn, serving Kaga cuisine on the region's own crafts.
From couriers to innkeepers
Asadaya’s story starts long before the inn. In 1659 the Kaga domain appointed the founder, Ihei, to carry its mid-sized freight, and the family ran the domain’s courier service to Edo for about two hundred years, until the Meiji Restoration.
In 1867 the family gave up the courier duty and opened an inn in Jukken-machi, in the centre of Kanazawa. Renamed Asadaya in 1930 and rebuilt in 1977, that inn is today’s sukiya-style ryotei ryokan, while the wider company has gone on to run ryotei, restaurants and hotels across the city.
A ryokan with very few rooms
The inn is deliberately small, with only a handful of guest rooms and a few groups a day, so that each can be looked after closely. The rooms look onto small courtyard gardens. The main garden was made by a gardener who had worked on Ōkōchi Sansō in Kyoto and moved to Kanazawa for three months to build it; it includes a podocarpus tree dating from 1728.
Kaga cuisine, served on Kaga crafts
The kitchen cooks Kaga cuisine, the traditional cooking of the Kanazawa region, from seasonal produce: fresh fish, sweet shrimp and crab from the coast, and vegetables from the hills, chosen to suit each guest. Meals are served in private rooms.
The tableware carries as much weight as the food. Dishes arrive on Arita and Kutani porcelain, Kaga maki-e lacquer and Kyoto ceramics, and the inn puts its aim in terms of pleasure for the eye as well as the palate. The kitchen has also run regular staff exchanges with chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants in New York.
Asadaya held one star in the 2021 Michelin Guide Hokuriku.
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