Funakoshi opened in November 2024 in Noma, a residential quarter in the south of Fukuoka, in a house that had been the chef's grandfather's for more than seventy years. Funakoshi Hisao, then thirty-three, renovated it; his father, an architect, drew the interior. The address explains nothing — the résumé does. Six years in Kanazawa's kaiseki world, where his training is widely reported to include Kataori, the city's hardest table. Then seven years at Kikuzushi in Kasuga, holder of a Michelin star frozen since the guide's one-off 2019 Kyushu edition and one of the island's hardest reservations, where he rose to second-in-command.
What you eat
The course opens with warm Yame black tea, a nod to the tea country south of the city, then moves through seven or eight tsumami of kaiseki grade — abalone with egg-tofu in a clear soup, kue cured with yuzu — before a dozen nigiri in the Hakata-mae manner and tamago. He deliberately did not copy his master. The rice is a larger grain; the shari leans on mild rice vinegar where Kikuzushi's is red; the fish comes through his own suppliers — hirame, madai, sawara, shako from Goto and Amakusa waters, in season, with no year-round frozen tuna to fall back on.
The house
Eight seats at a hinoki counter set in a tatami-floored room, all guests starting together. Dinner runs Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; Wednesday, Friday and Saturday add lunch; Sundays the house rests. Nishitetsu Takamiya station is about fifteen minutes on foot, and there is parking — this is a neighborhood, not a nightlife district.
Booking reality
Phone only, in Japanese — no booking site, and no published rule for when the book opens. But the door is open: no introduction required, bookable from a single seat. Tabelog reached 4.08 within two years of opening; Fukuoka's Michelin guide has been frozen since 2019, so no star is possible — perhaps one reason the seats can still be had. Our desk can make the call. We cannot promise the seat.
