The Places · Japan
Kobe
Made By profiles 3 places in Kobe, spanning modern kaiseki, modern spanish with japanese ingredients, seasonal italian tasting menu — each tied to the people and producers behind it.
01.Modern Kaiseki
Uemura
Kobe, Japan
Kobe’s kaiseki scene sits between port-city cosmopolitanism and Kansai restraint, and Uemura belongs to its small counter-led tier. The draw is not spectacle but discipline: an 11-seat counter, seasonal Japanese cuisine, Tabelog Award recognition, La Liste scoring, and a format that rewards diners who understand kaiseki as sequence, timing, and proportion rather than luxury theatre.
● 1 artisanView →
02.Modern Spanish with Japanese Ingredients
Ca Sento
Kobe, Japan
Ca Sento places Spanish cooking inside Kobe’s small, high-precision fine-dining tier, with Chef Shinya Fukumoto working in an Innovative-Spanish register rather than a tapas-bar idiom. Its 2026 Tabelog Bronze Award, 2025 Tabelog 100 selection for Innovative / Creative cuisine, and OAD Japan recognition put it in the city’s serious reservation conversation.
● 1 artisanView →
03.Seasonal Italian Tasting Menu
Kitanozaka Kinoshita
Kobe, Japan
A second-floor Italian restaurant in Kobe's Nakayamatedori district, Kitanozaka Kinoshita earns recognition on both La Liste's 2026 Top Restaurants list (86 points) and Opinionated About Dining's 2025 Japan rankings. Chef Noriyuki Kinoshita works within a tradition where Japanese precision meets Italian pasta technique, placing the restaurant in a small comparable set of serious European kitchens operating at high levels outside Tokyo and Osaka.
● 1 artisanView →