Ike Edoyakiunagi Asahitei

Fire after steam, learned at the family grill

Steam loosens the fat before fire sets the finish. Hideki Morimoto, Executive Chef at Ike Edoyakiunagi Asahitei in Uda, Nara, keeps that Edo sequence at the center of the kitchen. His father, the previous owner and a Tokyo-trained unagi master, put him to the grill at 18, past the easier romance of a broad apprenticeship and straight into the station where eel gives little room for correction. The old saying attached to the craft gives three years to skewering and eight to dressing; grilling asks for the rest of a working life. Morimoto’s training followed that severity. Heat, timing, the angle of the fish, the tare’s hold on the surface, the rice waiting underneath: each part becomes visible only through repetition. The restaurant began in 1964, and the family line matters here because the method did not arrive as a concept. It came through a father asking a son to stand before the fire and keep learning the mark it leaves.

Large eel, Koshihikari rice, far infrared heat

The kitchen’s focus is narrow by design: unadon, unaju, and shira-yaki, with Edo-style eel prepared through steaming before grilling. Morimoto sources Ajiman eel from Miyazaki Prefecture and pairs it with Koshihikari rice from nearby Nara farmers. The eel meets far infrared heat after its steam, then takes tare without surrendering the fish to sugar or spice. Local root vegetable pickles and soup made with Hokkaido kelp and two kinds of bonito keep the plate in the same register, precise but not ornamental. The beverage side stays modest, with sake and shochu serving the eel rather than drawing attention away from it. Michelin has marked the restaurant with Bib Gourmand recognition, including 2024, and the product is large, the sequence is fixed, and the cook’s hand has to hold softness and char in the same piece of fish.

Cedar in the room, quiet at the counter

The room carries Uda’s lumber-town past without needing to announce it. Tables were cut from a single 400-year-old cedar tree; signs and shelves use 800-year-old cedar; wainscoting comes from protected Kasuga cedar. Edo-period transoms sit in shoji screens and partitions, so the meal happens among materials older than the restaurant and, in some cases, older than the town’s present trade in memory. Warm light catches the grain. Yoshino cedar chopsticks meet the eel and rice with the same quiet insistence as the room itself, a small tool chosen for the dish rather than for ceremony. At the pass, the drama remains practical: rice, fish, tare, steam, fire.

A house held by one specialty

As Uda’s older timber identity recedes, Ike Edoyakiunagi Asahitei keeps part of it in use, not behind glass. The craft has not widened into variety for variety’s sake; Morimoto’s station still returns to eel, rice, cedar, and the inherited discipline of the grill. The house carries unadon through steam, far infrared heat, and Hideki Morimoto’s tare.