Tenaga Ashinaga — Restaurant in Takayama

My worse meal in 23 days in Japan. Not a good experience. Hot plate meal not recommended here- they make you cook the meat on paper! Not good! I ordered the hida beef loin on hot plate and it was a disaster. I'm giving it 2 stars because I believe the meat was fresh. The salad and Miso soup were also decent, but I didn't come here for that- I came for the meat! 1st negative- they require you cook the meat on parchment paper. WHY? You can't get a sear on it that way. It's like steaming it, verse hot plate cooking it. It also takes the veggies sooo long to cook this way. When I asked why, I was told because the meat would stick. Then I asked if all restaurants in Takayama make you cook on paper and she said NO, ONLY HERE! 🤦🏻‍♀️ 2nd negative the hot plate was brought hot but not lit, with no fire. When I asked, he said yes it's hot to cook. So as a 1st timer here, I started. 10 minutes later and the meat just turned gray-ish not brown. Knowing it should be done, I tried it and it was raw. Finally someone came over and said, "oh there's no fire" and lit the small burner. 🤦🏻‍♀️ So, I continued to then "cook" the meat, but as mentioned it was more steamed in texture and taste. Not pleasant to eat and took very long. Then half way through, the small fire went out and I had to call again for a new one. Negative 3- I ordered loin bescuse I prefer lean cuts, which in the picture also looks very lean, but was given pieces with lots of fat that were not loin. Negative 4- after I asked about the paper, I told the waitress I wasn't happy with the cooking, she shrugged and walked away. I still had most of my meat and veggies left. I wish she would have offered a different cooking method to fix the problem. Very disappointed, especially because they were not busy and could have made it better. I do NOT recommend this place for...

Great for gluten free! Well, I showed them my "no wheat, rye, barley, mizuame... Can you please help me find something to eat" card, and the manager/chef came over to speak with me. He asked what I was interested in eating, and knowing the easiest and safest thing for me to get was the second most expensive on the menu--the thing where you cook it yourself on a stone plate. I basically had veggies and meat with only salt (bring your own GF soy sauce). It was still delicious! The best is so tender. Also, they gave me a hard boiled egg since I couldn't have the miso soup or tofu.

I do not know if anything else can be made gluten free, but anything where you cook it, yourself, on the stone plate should be ok if you talk to them!

Also, everything else was closed on a Monday night at 5pm (and still was at 6:30pm), so...

Very friendly staff, was greeted to our seats the moment we entered and they had provided us a value set menu and a normal one, both which are english-friendly as well. As we had ordered our food and was waiting, they had asked us to move to a larger table, which is a plus to their service as we were grateful to be eating on a larger table. After that, we had our meals arrived to us and it was very well worth it. The hida beef set itself was delicious and it was a great dining experience for our last trip. Overall, the staffs there are friendly, able to speak English and will welcome you warmly from the cold weather outside. Food overall was great, at a reasonable price, you can get a meal which consists of both great valued quantity and quality. Would definitely visit again when I...