At 1,000 metres on the Yatsugatake side of Chino, an Italy-trained chef cooks everything over wood and cures his own ham with sake koji — eight seats, one fire, three parties a night.
By SHOKU NOREN TeamFacts last verified September 2026How we check
In shortWood-fired Italian from Nagano ingredients only — house-cured culatello, Yatsugatake game, handmade pasta. You can book it online yourself, or our Tokyo desk can request the table for you.
Price
Seasonal twelve-course menu ¥19,800 at lunch or dinner, tax included, plus 10% service
Hours
Lunch at 12:00; dinner seated together at 18:00 sharp — allow about three hours
Closed
Thursdays, plus irregular days
Seats
Eight — a four-seat counter and two tables
Payment
Cards accepted; card registered at booking, settled at the restaurant; 10% service charge
Getting there
About 25 minutes by car from JR Chino (Chuo Line) or 20 from the Suwa-Minami interchange; a bus to Hiromi then five minutes on foot. Arrange a taxi in advance
Noriyuki Usui left Tokyo’s Italian kitchens for Italy itself in
2009 — a station at Ristorante Paolo Teverini, an apprenticeship in
culatello at Antica Corte Pallavicina in Emilia‑Romagna, a sous‑chef’s
post at Osteria del Castello in Piedmont — came home to run kitchens
in Roppongi and Minami‑Aoyama, and in 2017 moved to the Yatsugatake
foothills. Ca’enne, which he opened in April 2020 among the holiday
villas of Chino’s Toyohira district at 1,000 metres, is what those
years add up to: a wood‑fired Italian restaurant that uses only what
Nagano produces. The Japan Times named it a Destination Restaurant
in 2024; Tabelog has given it a Bronze award every year from 2023 to
2026.
What you eat
One seasonal course of twelve dishes, the same at lunch and dinner,
at ¥19,800 plus 10% service. Its anchor is the house prosciutto —
made to the culatello method Usui learned in Italy, but fermented with
koji from Masumi, the Suwa sake brewery, and aged in the mountain
air. Around it: silk eel from Okaya over the embers, pasta cut from
Yatsugatake buckwheat or Shinshu wheat, river fish, mountain
vegetables and game, all touched by the smoke of the fire that is the
restaurant’s only heat source. Allergies and dislikes are handled at
booking, not on the day.
The booking reality
The house is reservation‑only, by the previous day at the latest,
through TableCheck (linked from its own site, in English) or by
phone on 050‑3159‑5561 — a line that often goes unanswered during
service. Capacity is the constraint: one party of up to three at
lunch, seated at noon, and three parties at dinner, all
entering together at 18:00 because the fire is built for a single
service. Guests who have worked the calendar report that dates open
two months ahead and that popular ones go as they appear; the house
itself does not publish the window. A party of five or more at
dinner, or one with pre‑school children, must write to the house by
email first.
Card details are registered at booking and payment is made on the
day. Cancellation terms are posted in two versions — 30/50/100% at
two days, one day and the day itself on the house’s English page; 50%
at two weeks and 100% at one week on the Japanese page — so we confirm the
current rule when we book. Getting there is part of the reservation:
there is no taxi rank in the woods, so a car or a pre‑arranged taxi is
required, and the house can arrange a designated driver after dinner.
Our desk handles the Japanese exchange — the email for a larger table,
the taxi, the confirmation in your name.
You can book it online yourself, or our Tokyo desk can request it for you. Request this table →
Go if you
Travelers looping through Suwa, Tateshina and the Yatsugatake
highlands who want the region’s Italian rather than another kaiseki —
and anyone who has eaten culatello in Zibello and wants to taste what
it becomes at altitude with a sake brewery’s koji.
Free release-date alerts: the day before, on the morning of release day (08:00 JST) and about 30 minutes before when the time is known — or a weekly summary if the house opens a little every day.
Caenne: common questions
Can you book Caenne from abroad?
Yes. Online via TableCheck or by phone, by the previous day; the web calendar is reported to open two months ahead. You can book online yourself, or our Tokyo desk can request the table for you; our ¥6,000-per-seat fee is charged only if we confirm your table.
Some of these links are referral links: if you book through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Restaurants never pay us to be listed or ranked. Editorial policy
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