On Tabelog, the number one restaurant in all of Japan is Katatori, in Kanazawa.
And legend has it there’s a restaurant that has surpassed even its own master — also in Kanazawa, run by a former apprentice of Katatori: Kisatsuki.
Kisatsuki opened in April 2025, and by January of the following year it had already been awarded a 🥈 Silver at the Tabelog Awards, landing at a striking 4.53 rating — 28th in all of Japan.
Chef Kisatsuki Kosei left Kyushu at 17, and went on to train at a Kyoto ryotei, at Tsurukō in Kanazawa, at Ishikawa in Kagurazaka, and finally at Katatori. After nearly 17 years of accumulated experience, he finally struck out on his own, opening his restaurant on the second-to-last day of Aries season in 2025.
It truly lives up to half a lifetime of learning. At his counter, everything is clean, precise, and yet never loses its sense of ease. The delicacy of Kyoto, the local character of Kanazawa, and the high craft of contemporary Japanese cuisine are all quietly gathered at a counter that seats just seven.
A small bowl of soup to start, made with pan-seared Noto shiitake, fragrant and gentle on entry. Two sips and it’s gone, followed right after by a shot of local Ishikawa sake to open the appetite — hands rubbing together, ready to begin.
The meal proper opens with mountain vegetables at their most seasonal — beneath a maki ebi sits a large, tender green cube that turns out to be tofu made from parsley, delicately soft with a touch of viscosity, its distinctly plant-like fragrance building with every bite.
Late spring into early summer is exactly when Noto cockles are at their best. Lightly seared, carrying a firm crunch and high sweetness, resting on rice porridge — it’s instantly, solidly anchored.
Ingenious cooking applied to local ingredients — the equation of 1+1>2 solved correctly.
After showing off one round of the soft, harmonious pairing of local seafood and vegetables in a scorpionfish bowl dish, the chef opened up a stage entirely devoted to Himi’s seafood.
All caught that very morning, and even the way they’re handled at the counter is a kind of aesthetic statement. Squid curled into elegant frills, horse mackerel taken only from its richest, fattiest middle section, each portion piled like a small mountain…
But it’s only once you taste it that you realize the plain-looking madako — er, magochi (flathead) — is actually the most talented of them all. Beyond its soft, tender bite, what lingers in the mouth is, remarkably, like a clear spring. Clean, with a touch of minerality, and a very refreshing sweetness — like sitting by a stream and cupping a handful of mountain spring water.
Of course the horse mackerel, with its rich fat and gorgeous translucent pink, was beautifully sweet too — but if there’s a single best fish guest at this meal, it has to be the magochi, even if its Chinese name translates roughly to “dog-leg fish.” (?)
Once the sashimi section passes, the chef stops showing off technique altogether and hands the whole space over to the guests to simply enjoy the food — yet the sense of awe never lets up.
After a few rounds of monkfish tempura at certain Tokyo restaurants, I’d grown somewhat dismissive of the dish, tired of how much jaw work it demanded. I was already complaining to myself before the first bite even went down.
— But this particular monkfish was worth an entire lifetime.
The outer layer fried impossibly crisp, while the fish inside stayed beautifully plump and tender, still carrying a clear, delicate sense of muscle. The moment you bite through, sweetness spills out along with the juices, and the aroma opens right up with it. Not a trace of heaviness — a richness handled with extraordinary precision. Monkfish tempura, it turns out, can reach this level — enough to make you rethink the entire dish.
Then sweet peas paired with onion — unexpectedly, a single spoonful revealed the onion still holding some structure, its completely different sweetness and aroma layering with the peas’ own in the dashi, full of the atmosphere of late spring drifting into early summer.
The surprising thing was probably the oysters — beyond their sheer size, the flavor was also a strike against everything you thought you knew. Maybe it was good luck, but they were plump enough to carry a faintly fish-fat-like aroma, and yet slicker and softer than fish itself, unfurling especially beautifully in the mouth.
The tilefish, meanwhile, lightly smoked over firewood and wearing a slightly ashen, “mud-child” exterior, once again delivered that clear-spring sense within its fish aroma, along with an especially memorable sweetness. Clean, yet anything but simple.
Stunning enough to make you wonder if Kisatsuki’s ingredients have been secretly enchanted…!
Fried tofu skin wrapped around mizuna, looking on the outside like a little white rabbit, and still a perfect answer on the inside. The vegetable itself sweet and crisp, releasing a slightly sticky softness the moment you bite through, at which point the aroma and firmness of the outer tofu skin steps in right on cue to carry the flavor forward. A tiny roll, and yet it holds command over every single moment in the mouth.
The sakura trout, meanwhile, was “rolled” together with cucumber, egg crepe, and ginger into another kind of clean, refreshing feel, its flavors meshing together just right. There are so many ways to prepare sakura trout, and more often than not people keep adding to it. But here, plant ingredients are used instead to make its fish aroma even cleaner, leaving behind a distinctly memorable impression.
The staple course offered five choices in total. First, a bowl of plain white rice, paired with simmered beef shigure-ni and wild boar miso. After that came horse mackerel, onion, fried monkfish, and egg, with portions adjustable to your own appetite and each one generously sized, however modest or indulgent you wanted to go.
The horse mackerel and monkfish, already moving on their own earlier, found yet another way to work once folded into the rice course. Carried by the rice, their savory aroma felt even more complete, and the sense of satisfaction climbed right along with it. But just when the meal seemed to be nearing its end, Kisatsuki pulled off one more trick — using a single 🥚 to pull everyone into an entirely different world.
The yolk sat obediently atop the rice, while the white had been whipped into foam, its fuwa airiness instantly lightening the whole bowl. Halfway through, a generous handful of bonito flakes was piled on top, and the gentle chewing released the yolk’s aroma slowly outward. What looked like a simple bowl of egg-topped rice turned out, once in the mouth, to be an entirely different kind of surprise.
The meal closed with a mugwort red-bean rice ball. Its plant character came through clearly, the red bean paste silky, the proportions well-judged. A gentle, satisfying end to the meal.
It’s hard to imagine that over a rapidly passing two and a half hours, we experienced, again and again, a kind of “pure-flavor strike” that kept exceeding what we thought we already knew about certain ingredients. This isn’t a place relying only on raw preparations, or on culinary minimalism to underline the ingredients — it’s a place using precisely calibrated seasoning to keep manufacturing one 1+1>2 combination after another.
Kisatsuki obviously has a deep understanding of local seafood, but it also borrows the technique of kaiseki cuisine to amplify the ingredients’ own strengths — especially the specific character of Ishikawa Prefecture’s produce.
About two years ago, I actually took a trip through the Toyama and Ishikawa area.
But what Kisatsuki brought was almost an entirely new understanding — a sheer, cliff-edge leap upward.
Between dishes this delicate and yet this direct, something hard to put into words takes shape — a kind of awe, a kind of quiet emotion. Because of Kisatsuki, you find yourself thinking: Ishikawa really is wonderful. This sea really is wonderful (to eat from).
A ten-hour round trip just for this meal — exhausting, and entirely worth it.
Looking forward to next time, to seeing Kanazawa’s four seasons through Kisatsuki’s cooking.
Kisatsuki
15-3 Tokiwa-machi, Kanazawa City, Ishikawa Prefecture
Omakase Menu ¥40,000+