cucina salve — Restaurant in Chichibu

My first time eating at this kind of set course menu, and it was a really lovely experience for me. We contacted ahead of time, and requested a vegan meal, to which the restaurant really kindly accommodated and prepared a delicious course for us. I really like the fact that he didn’t try to match the other non vegan menus, but created an entirely different menu to make sure that we could enjoy the best food possible. He also gave separate wine recommendations to pair with the vegan dishes, different to the wine recommendations for the non vegan diners. Every dish was so delicious, I was really impressed. Even basic dishes like salad and simple grilled vegetables were so incredibly tasty. I can’t cook like that at home. I don’t normally feel restaurant meals are worth mentioning for their taste, but this restaurant was delicious. I can feel the passion that the chef puts into his work, and that elevated the experience for me. You can tell he really takes pride in his work, and loves what he does. I felt he really cared and it was important to him that we enjoyed our meal to the fullest. Also, he grew all the vegetables himself, which I think is really special. I do agree with the other comments that the meal explanations were a little long, however, I actually really appreciated the fact that I could understand what ingredients went into each dish, and I even got some inspiration for my own cooking at home. After the meal, I told the chef that I loved certain dishes, and he kindly gave me some advice on how to recreate it at home. This was really appreciated. Thank you so much for a wonderful dinner and for your hospitality. If I’m ever in Chichibu city again, I would love to visit again and see what’s on the menu...

First, I want to say that this one-star review is not for food. We had a very bad experience in this restaurant: we arrived quite early and there were free tables, so the waitress kindly guided us to one of them. However, when the owner saw us, he told us that this day was 'book-only'... That was weird since the waitress had not asked us if we had a reservation 🤔 (which is very typical in Japan). So he told us to leave! That was very rude. We can understand that it can be annoying for a chef to receive non-native speakers. But telling clients who've already been seated to get out is simply shocking. Obviously, the tables were not reserved, the waitress had welcomed us nicely, we could see she was very embarrassed about the situation and couldn't say anything. We would have preferred the chef to tell us the truth (too frustrating to explain everything in Japanese to non-native speakers), we would have understood. We've been in Japan for 2 years and this had never happened to us before. Fortunately, we found other restaurants in Chichibu where people were very welcoming...

An amazing farm to table Italian restaurant in Chichibu, kudos to the chef and team.

Made a dinner reservation for my partner birthday. After the reservation they sent me a non-generic email to ask about any preference and a welcoming message, they even translate it to English.

The food. Mind blowing ~3 hours course meal made to bring out the best flavor of each ingredients. The flavor are light but very satisfying. The ingredients are mostly coming from the chef's garden, around chichibu and independent farms.

The drinks. Great wine selection where the chef can recommend you which wine are paired best with the current meal.

The service. At home feel with very attentive and polite staff. The chef will explain each meal. The shop interior are very warm, decorated with dried plants by the chef.

I highly recommend to eat here, it was a very...