Kitanozaka Kinoshita(北野坂木下), Kobe, Japan

To be honest, I don’t really visit Japanese-Italian restaurants as often as I’d like. My excuse has always been that I travel to both Japan and Italy quite frequently, but each time I focus on trying the original cuisine (if such a thing even exists, lol) rather than exploring more fusion-based, innovative styles of cuisine.

However, I had only heard good things from friends about Kitanozaka Kinoshita (北野坂木下), a Japanese-Italian restaurant run by Chef Kinoshita Noriyuki (木下憲幸). Chef Kinoshita began his career in Osaka before moving to Italy, where he gained experience at restaurants including La Peca** in Vicenza. He eventually opened this restaurant in Kitanozaka, Kobe, in 2020.

Here’s a brief description of the menu, with ☆ for dishes I particularly enjoyed:

1. Smoked caviar on vegetable crostini
2. Hamaguri steamed with Cava and Italian parsley ☆
3. Grilled bamboo shoots from Senshu (泉州), with sansho oil and anchovy paste
4. Grilled hotaruika with cold cappellini, dressed in a sauce made from ground hotaruika and lemon zest ☆
5. Insalata di riso, the flesh of kegani and its tomalley, topped with sudachi zest
6. Zuppa di pesce made from various crabs and akazaebi, prepared for 7 hours, a slice of airy ciabatta ☆
7. Grilled shirako with a sugo all’arrabbiata made from torafugu broth, tomato, and nanohana ☆☆ : top-notch, an absolutely genius combination
8. Whole crispy abalone with a risotto of abalone innards and taranome, aosanori ankake(あんかけ)
9. Grilled nodoguro with a salad of urui
10. Pasta with hokkigai, fruit tomatoes, and basil
11. Grilled Kuroge wagyu chateaubriand with broad/fava beans
12. Risotto of sakuraebi and takenoko, topped with fried sakuraebi
13. The famous Kinoshita cheesecake ☆
14. Tomato and basil sorbet with strawberry sauce
15. Caffè doppio

For the pasta and risotto courses, they ask how much you’d like to eat. I chose a smaller portion (少なめ) since I was getting full, while my dining companion opted for a 'large' pasta and ended up with a whole meal lol.

It’s easy to see why this restaurant is so popular. It offers a wide range of courses, many featuring high-quality luxury ingredients, each served in generous portions. It also excels in certain areas. For instance, the soups here are truly world-class, the kind I’d have no trouble being served in three-star kitchens around the world. The hamaguri–Cava soup and the zuppa di pesce both displayed remarkable depth of flavor and complexity without ever feeling heavy or cloying. I suppose the Japanese really do know a thing or two about dashi and shiru…

Nevertheless, the most impressive aspect of Kitanozaka Kinoshita is that some dishes feel like “a dish that can only be eaten at Kinoshita,” to quote a phrase from their omakase.in page. I travelled along Japan this past winter and tried plenty of torafugu shirako, ranging from good to excellent, but none matched the level of creativity of Kinoshita’s grilled shirako with sugo all’arrabbiata.

I’d really love to visit again during white truffle season and see what Chef Kinoshita can do with those gems, hopefully I can snag another cancellation.