Riverside Kitchen & Bar at Hotel Indigo Hakone Gora (Kiga, Hakone-machi, Ashigarashimo-gun, Kanagawa) is introducing a new dinner course built around the season's harvest, available from September 2026.
This autumn's course comes from Executive Chef Kei Sakamoto, who has honed his craft at leading French restaurants. Its centerpiece, the "Chef's Special Course," keeps the restaurant's signature French technique and bold wood-fire cooking at its core while pushing further into Japanese sensibility than ever before.
Alongside autumn staples like mackerel pike, kabocha squash, chestnuts, and grapes, the course brings in ingredients rooted in Japanese food culture — plum, yuba, whitebait, myoga ginger, shiso, miso, and sesame. Rather than simply combining French and Japanese elements, it draws on accumulated experience and technique to bring them together naturally as a single dish.
Each plate layers Hakone's autumn scenery, Sakamoto's own memories, and his experience as a chef, offering a taste of the season unlike anything the restaurant has served before.
For Sakamoto, a dish isn't complete once it simply tastes good. He believes flavor, temperature, texture, aroma, and visual presentation all need to come together in harmony before a dish is truly finished. Rather than chasing trends or fleeting impact, his focus is on drawing out the full potential of familiar ingredients through technique, and expressing his own skill, sensibility, and accumulated experience on the plate.
This autumn, he layers that philosophy with a new expression of "Japanese-ness," delivering dishes paired with the memory of Hakone's fall.
Chef's Special Course — 5 Courses, ¥19,000
This autumn's Chef's Special Course showcases dishes that bring out flavors and seasonal notes only a Japanese chef could express, all through the lens of French technique.
Amuse — "Dusk"
Grilled scallop and kabocha squash, with a plum, yuba, and whitebait condiment
A classic pairing of rich kabocha purée and smoky grilled scallop, layered with three Japanese ingredients: plum, yuba, and whitebait. The sweetness of the kabocha meets the plum's acidity, finished with chrysanthemum petals and shiso flower for color and aroma.
Sakamoto pictures the dusk of a season turning toward autumn — and captures that scene not just in flavor, but in a delicate presentation reminiscent of Japanese cuisine.
Appetizer — "Autumn Shadow"
Mackerel pike and eggplant composition, myoga ginger salad
A terrine of mackerel pike — a defining autumn fish — along with eggplant, semi-dried tomato, and shiso. The technique is French, but the texture and presentation draw on Japanese sensibility.
Tapenade, basil paste, and avruga caviar meet myoga ginger and shiso for a balance that leans toward neither Japanese nor French cuisine alone. Depending on the angle, the presentation is playful enough to bring a makizushi roll to mind.
Fish — "Longing"
Local kinmedai bouillabaisse
The bouillabaisse Sakamoto has continued to refine stands as a signature dish of Hotel Indigo Hakone Gora.
Thick-cut local kinmedai (splendid alfonsino) is grilled alongside lobster, scallop, squid, and mussels, then paired with a saffron-infused sauce built from a rich stock drawn from fish bones and aromatic vegetables.
The dish grew out of Sakamoto's longing for the South of France and the Mediterranean from his training years in his twenties, meeting the local kinmedai he encountered in Hakone. He calls it a signature dish he continues to pursue rather than one he considers finished.
Meat — "Nostalgia"
Wood-fired Wagyu "Diamond Fuji" sirloin, aged miso from Kato Hyotaro Shoten, charred maitake mushroom
Miso and sesame mark Sakamoto's boldest new challenge this autumn.
Building on the French-based sauce work he has developed over the years, he combines fond de veau with kinzanji miso and ground sesame paste for a rich, deep sauce with a distinctly Japanese character.
Wagyu, grilled over an open wood fire, is paired with a generous portion of maitake mushroom. Rather than adding more elements, the dish lets the strength of each ingredient stand on its own — the result of repeated trial and error inspired by Hakone's autumn mountains, and a dish that embodies this season's "challenge with Japanese sensibility."
Dessert — "Reminiscence"
Autumn crepe with chestnut, cream, and Anno sweet potato ice cream
A crepe wrapped around Japanese chestnut and apple — two of autumn's signature flavors — together with custard cream.
The chestnut's rich sweetness, the apple's acidity, and the cream's depth come together in one dish, finished with Anno sweet potato ice cream. It closes the course by layering two memories: Sakamoto's years training in French cuisine, and the autumn mountain scenery that has stayed with him.
Signature Course — 4 Courses, ¥15,000
The main dish grills a seasonal local fish over an open wood fire, served with autumn root vegetables. A fond de veau–based sauce layering peanut richness with vinegar's acidity brings out Sakamoto's experience and sensibility in a course built around autumn flavors.
Appetizer — "Autumn Shade"
Seared bonito with fig and Minami-Hakone gouda; tofu and Shonan Gold emulsion
Standard Course — 4 Courses, ¥10,000
A course built around autumn flavors like kabocha squash and chestnut, offering an easy way to enjoy wood-fired cooking and the season. The main dish, Shonan pork, is grilled over an open wood fire and paired with a rich, Japanese-inflected sauce of kinzanji miso and ground sesame, alongside a generous portion of maitake mushroom.
Soup — "Twilight"
Kabocha squash and chestnut potage, with a lingering note of truffle
Executive Chef Kei Sakamoto on This Autumn's Course
"I've built my cooking on a foundation of French cuisine, and this time I didn't want to change that foundation — I wanted to push the 'Japanese-ness' inside me one step further into the dishes.
For the mackerel pike and eggplant dish, I used French technique while keeping the texture and presentation closer to Japanese cuisine in mind. For the meat course, I kept the sauce philosophy I've built over the years, but made miso and sesame the leads for the first time.
I believe cooking comes from everything I've experienced, everything I've found delicious, everything I've liked — it all builds up into a dish.
Hakone's autumn scenery and ingredients unique to the Japanese fall — I wanted to see how I could bring those together with the French technique I've cultivated and our wood-fire cooking. I hope this course lets you feel a side of my cooking that's a little different from before."
Availability: September 1, 2026 (Tue) – November 30, 2026 (Mon)
Hours: 5:30 PM – 9:30 PM (Last Order), 10:00 PM close
Location: Riverside Kitchen & Bar, 1F, Hotel Indigo Hakone Gora
All prices include consumption tax and service charge.
Limited-Time Stay Package: "Hakone Premium Escape"
Guests can also savor the Chef's Special Course as part of a limited-time stay package, "Hakone Premium Escape."
The package pairs the full five-course Chef's Special Course dinner with a bottle of "HINEMOS Hakone Limited Junmai Daiginjo" sake, offering a pairing of French-and-wood-fire cuisine with Japanese sensibility alongside sake — a dining experience exclusive to this package.
After dinner, guests can unwind in a room with its own hot spring bath, followed by a full buffet breakfast the next morning. It's a stay built for savoring Hakone's shift from autumn into winter through both its cuisine and its hot springs.
Hakone Premium Escape
Reservation period: August 18, 2026 (Tue) – August 31, 2026 (Mon)
Stay period: August 19, 2026 (Wed) – December 25, 2026 (Fri)
Package includes:
- Wood-fire dinner course (5-course Chef's Special Course)
- HINEMOS Hakone Limited Junmai Daiginjo sake bottle
- Full buffet breakfast
The dinner menu varies by season.
Hotel Indigo Hakone Gora's Neighborhood Hosts share local culture and history with guests, offering stories and experiences that go beyond what any search engine can surface. Through close connections with the local community, the hotel provides guests with one-of-a-kind experiences such as the Somei Yoshino and weeping cherry blossom avenue along the Hayakawa River, the Yutate Shishimai (sacred fire lion dance) on July 15, the Miyagino Summer Festival "Mushiokuri Fire Festival" in August, and the Hakone Gora Daimonji bonfire event.
The Hakone Daimonji can be viewed alongside simultaneous fireworks from the hotel's riverside restaurant and guest rooms. Guests can enjoy Hakone's full seasonal palette: cherry blossoms along the Hayakawa River, autumn leaves on Mt. Myojogatake (the Daimonji mountain), and the pampas grass highlands of Sengokuhara. In winter, a relaxing new style of hot spring retreat awaits, with thermal baths to ease away the cold and wintry Hakone scenery to savor.
At Riverside Kitchen & Bar, the chef commands open flames at the center of the dining room, serving an array of bold grilled dishes. The wood-fire cooking uses thinned cypress and oak, whose smoke adds depth of flavor to meat and fish. Premium meats, fresh seafood from nearby fishing ports, and lovingly grown local vegetables are all featured on the menu. Inside a refined space colored by the restaurant's artwork, guests can fully immerse in a feast of flame, aroma, and fresh ingredients.
Beyond the private hot spring in every guest room, guests can also enjoy footbaths and thermal spring experiences alongside the restaurant's wood-fire cuisine, for a seasonal retreat stay that captures everything special about Hakone.
Access:
- From Hakone-Yumoto Station (Odakyu Romance Car): approx. 15 min by Hakone Tozan Bus to "Miyaginobashi" stop, then approx. 2 min on foot
- From Odawara Station (JR): approx. 40 min by free shuttle bus
- From Gora Station (Hakone Tozan Railway): approx. 15 min on foot
