Da terra

A house, a farm, and the same family

Da terra means from the earth, and the name is close to literal. The restaurant occupies part of a century-old kominka in Asuka, Nara, a village of some five thousand residents with fourteen hundred years of history and the ruins of Kawara-dera Temple nearby. Chef Hirokazu Nakai was born and raised in the building he now cooks in, and it opened as a restaurant on 2 March 2020 after renovation.

The farm is the other half of the arrangement. Nakai's parents work fields that yield more than a hundred varieties of vegetable a year, and that supply is the kitchen's compass rather than its garnish. It is a genuine family operation: the parents cultivate, the son directs the kitchen, and every dish begins with produce carrying Nara's terroir rather than a distributor's.

Vegetables first, Italian technique second

Nakai's stated philosophy is to think vegetables and think fruit, and the menu is built to obey it. The omakase runs to eleven courses, and the signature dish, Da Terra, gathers up to fifteen seasonal vegetables prepared in different registers within one plate, some raw, some roasted, some pureed, some boiled, so that texture and nuance carry what a protein would carry elsewhere.

Whole-grain pasta and bread are made from wheat harvested on the farm and ground in a stone mill, which closes the loop between field and bench in an unusually direct way. Meat and fish appear sparingly and receive an Italian hand, but they are never allowed to take the centre. Zero-waste practice runs alongside it, with cut ends and chicken droppings composted back into the fields, which is the practical form of the same idea rather than an ethical footnote.

A serene room surrounded by farmland

The dining room is light, airy and serene inside the historic house, with rustic wood halls and farmland on every side. The register is quiet and intimate, elegant without being formal in the urban sense, and the setting does much of the work: a peaceful rural atmosphere that makes an eleven-course vegetable sequence feel located rather than conceptual.

Access is part of the character. The house sits well outside urban Nara, nearly two kilometres from Okadera station, with parking for forty cars, and it takes reservations only. A meal here is often followed by a walk among the ruins, which suits a restaurant whose subject is the ground it stands on. The service is formal and the wine list curated, kept in proportion to a menu where vegetables set the weight.

A rural address that earned a star quickly

Recognition came fast for a restaurant in a village this size. Da terra holds one Michelin star and a Michelin Green Star for sustainability, and it has retained that standing since. The Green Star belongs to the same logic as the compost heap and the stone mill.

Asuka has drawn artists and cooks for years, and this house has become a modern anchor among the historical sites, influencing ventures nearby. What holds it together is not scale but proximity. In Asuka the farm is outside the door, the family works both ends of it, and a menu of more than a hundred vegetables is possible only because nobody has to order them in.