Restaurant Cheshire — Restaurant in Hakuba

A cute tucked away home style restaurant run by only 2 people but has an amazing lunch!

We ordered the tantanmen, yaki udon, okonomiyaki (served on sticks 😳) and their fruit cocktails - all were so good but the highlight was definitely the yaki (beef) udon and the fruit infused whisky which tasted like spiced apple and was SO yummy. Anything with fresh juice in Japan elevates it to another level!

Prices were also very fair for Hakuba area. It’s quite a small restaurant so come early - we came during a 1:30pm weekday dinner and only 2 other parties were there. It’s within the Echoland roundabout and very close to a shuttle stop but we walked from our hotel and were happy to stumble in to this family run...

As someone who speaks both English and Japanese fluently, I'd like to share my positive review on this spot, in both languages. There are some mixed reviews below, but I do believe this is a hidden gem and a special spot within Hakuba.

Slightly off Echoland, Cheshire offers a quieter ambience with ample seating for a variety of parties. I was traveling solo, so I was seated at the bar, giving me opportunities to talk to the 2 folks who run this whole place on their own.

They are the only ones who manage everything, so the service is not fast-food pace. Expect to wait a bit before being seated/recognized, for it to take a while to before your order is taken, and for your food to be prepared with thought. With a variety of languages spoken by the crowds visiting Hakuba, I can imagine navigating the customer population can be difficult for two Japanese-speaking people. The two try their very best to provide translated material to English-speaking customers, visible by the information they have posted on their storefront and inside. To bypass that translated information and expect clearly spoken English, was a bit frustrating to witness during my 90-minute meal.

The two do their very best to provide meals that are warm, amenable to various diets, and will give you a better Hakuba experience. I truly loved talking to both of them (albeit via my privilege of speaking Japanese as my native language), and people watching during my dinner. Two gentlemen seated behind me showed the Master a photo of them from last year, when they sat in the exact same table and ordered the same menu items. This place is a great spot, enough to attract annually re-visiting customers, and I hope to re-visit one day soon...

Was not open at 12:00 pm as listed here. Ended up finding very little open for lunch in main Echoland area. Came back at 1:00 pm and they were open. Vegetarian menu was up on a shelf and saw it after we had ordered. They should just put the vegetarian menu in with the rest of the pages on the table. We both had veggie curry. This was probably the worst meal we’ve had in Japan, boiled carrots, boiled asparagus, boiled potatoes and the usually so yummy Kobacha squash was so undercooked we could not eat it. The one piece of boiled broccoli was decent. The rice was good. 2600...