Japanese Restaurant Ginputei — Restaurant in Takayama

Food was great but service of drinks completely chaotic and disorganised. First they said they didn't have any red wine - it was sold out, then after querying this they then said they did indeed have red wine.

No wine glasses at first or not enough. It seems somebody had to go out and buy some more and these came up in the little food servicing lift. Then no cork screw.

They had to go downstairs with the bottles that had just been brought upstairs to open the bottles which took forever. Why didn't they have another cork screw upstairs and why did it take so long for bottles to come back opened? Also not enough menus - only two - for a group of 19.

The servers had to be continually reminded to take somebody's order for drinks but and again repeatedly to actually deliver the drinks to the tables. Together with the glasses.

However the worst thing that happened was being served white wine which was totally unsuitable for the food we were having. This was a sweet dessert wine. They didn't have any other white wine. But they didn't make it clear it was a dessert wine and furthermore a bottle from 1999, so basically out of date. The owner refused to accept that the wine was not suitable for Hida Beef and said it had been carefully selected. He also refused to accept that this type of wine dated 1999 was out of date and not good to drink. We didn't want to pay for this half bottle of wine that we had only had a little bit of to discover it was quite disgusting but the owner insisted that we did or he would call the police.

I think what has happened here is the owner has been scammed by a wine merchant and bought lots of out of date wine and has decided he will sell it all to tourists rather than try and get his money back from who sold it to him. Shocking and disgracefull behaviour.

I would suggest to the owner that he consider carefully his position on this matter and perhaps call JTB to explain, apologise and refund the money he took for the wine that should not...

We had the most wonderful experience at Ginputtei, a delightful, fun, Japanese restaurant in Takayama. Our tour bus took us to this amazing restaurant and we entered from the back and went up the stairs. There is a western style seating upstairs with tables and chairs, a shrine and old world Japanese style. The main level restaurant has traditional Japanese style seating downstairs, where you sit on the ground.

Everything was already set up for our tour group when we arrived. The food was all on a tray, with individual plates. Everyone had a bowl of rice, seaweed, miso soup, daikon, vegetables and absolutely delicious beef. We cooked our lunch ourselves on a metal, roof tile grill. We then dipped our food in their excellent sauce.

It was the best lunch that we had in our two week tour of Japan! Super memorable and my wife and I talk about it...

Cozy place, delicious Hida beef and great sake (serve it hot)!

They only accept guests between 5 and 7pm @ dinner, but you can sit as much as you’d like afterwards. We walked in and made no reservation.

Unfortunately, the staff didn’t speak English, but with my broken Japanese, a translate app, we made it work and oh how everything was so delicious! The menu is partially in English as well.

Expect to pay about ~4500 JPY / adult, and it’s cash only!

Definitely would...