Toyama Bay is called Japan's miracle larder — firefly squid, white shrimp, buri in winter, all rising from deep water minutes offshore — and Fujii is where that larder is cooked with the most polish. In 2019 chef Motoki Fujii moved his restaurant from central Toyama into a restored wooden merchant house in Iwase, the old port quarter where Kitamae trading ships once unloaded, and the Michelin Hokuriku guide promptly gave the new address two stars. The room looks onto a garden; the tram from Toyama station rattles past the sake breweries of the same street.
What you eat
A single seasonal course, lunch or dinner, at ¥33,000 with tax included: Toyama Bay seafood at its shortest possible distance from the net, mountain vegetables from the Tateyama foothills, and rice and water the prefecture is rightly vain about. Iwase itself has become a quiet craft quarter — glassblowers, sake, one great restaurant — worth the afternoon around your table.
The booking reality
Fully reservation-only, by telephone, in Japanese. The honest news: with proper lead time this book opens — the filter is the language and the planning, not a lottery. Dinner's last entry at 19:00 catches travelers off guard; we plan the tram schedule with the booking.
Go if you
Travelers routing the Hokuriku Shinkansen who want Toyama Bay eaten at the source rather than shipped — and anyone pairing a Kanazawa stay with the one dinner that justifies the thirty-minute hop.