In shortOmakase kaiseki that reads Nara's landscape onto the plate — Two MICHELIN Stars (MICHELIN Guide Japan 2026). Reservations run in Japanese and are hard to place from abroad, so our Tokyo desk requests the table for you, by phone and in Japanese.
Price
Omakase kaiseki ¥27,500–40,000 per person (varies with the market); private room +10%
Hours
Lunch 12:00 (single seating); dinner 17:30–19:00 last entry
Closed
Mondays, Tuesday lunch, lunch on the 1st, and the last day of each month; a holiday calendar is posted through December
Seats
Counter 6, two tables for 2, and one private room for 3–6
Payment
Cash, Visa, Mastercard and American Express
Getting there
Kintetsu Nara (about 18 minutes on foot) or the Fukuchiin-cho bus stop
Tsukumo is written 白 — “white”, the character you get by taking one
stroke from 百, a hundred — and read as 九十九, ninety‑nine. Chef
Masato Nishihara chose it for the old Japanese idea of unfinished
beauty: the gap between ninety‑nine and a hundred is where the
interest lives. Tokyo‑born, he spent ten years at Kyoto’s Arashiyama
Kitcho, two more learning soba kaiseki in Karuizawa, three as founding
head chef of a shojin restaurant in New York and three in a London
Japanese kitchen before opening near JR Nara Station in 2015. In June
2021 he moved the house into a machiya in Naramachi, the old
merchants’ quarter south of the deer park. It holds Two MICHELIN Stars
(MICHELIN Guide Japan 2026), as it has every year since the 2022
edition.
What you eat
One omakase kaiseki, lunch or dinner, priced from ¥27,500 to ¥40,000
depending on the market. Nishihara builds the menu from Nara: he
walks the Tsukigase plum groves in February to compose a dish around
them, pulls the closing strawberries from a grower’s field himself,
and sets the food on a collection that runs from living potters to
antiques he has re‑purposed. Tea‑kaiseki discipline underneath,
Nara’s landscape and history on top. Two things to know before you
sit down: guests under thirteen are not seated unless they eat the
full adult course, and photography is limited to the dishes — no
video, no interior, no staff.
The booking reality
The book is telephone‑only, in Japanese, on 0742‑22‑9707 between
10:00 and 21:00, and it opens exactly two months ahead to the
day: a call on 27 April can book through 27 June. Email is refused
and no booking site carries the house. Two guests is the minimum,
and a same‑day dinner is occasionally released to anyone who calls
by 16:00. Cancelling on the day costs the full course. Recent
visitors describe the seats as hard to land — yet the house is more
open than its reputation: it posts its closures through December and,
on 10 September 2026, a list of lunch and dinner dates still open in
the coming fortnight. A phone line that is often unanswered during
service, a Japanese‑only conversation and a two‑month window are
exactly what our desk handles: we call in Japanese, at the right
hour, on the right day.
Travelers giving Nara a night rather than a day trip from Kyoto, and
anyone who wants the region’s finest kaiseki without an introduction
— just a Japanese speaker who calls two months early.
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.
Tsukumo: common questions
Can you book Tsukumo from abroad?
Yes, through our Tokyo desk. Phone only, in Japanese, up to two months ahead to the day; two guests minimum. We call the restaurant for you, in Japanese, and the ¥6,000-per-seat fee is charged only if we confirm your table — no seat, no fee.
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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Facts on this page were checked by our Tokyo desk. You are welcome to quote them with a link:
