Kaiseki: what to expect at a ryokan dinner

What kaiseki is

Kaiseki grew out of the light meal served before the tea ceremony, and kept its principles: few ingredients on each plate, each at its best, in an order that moves from light to rich and back. The dishes are chosen to match the season and the bowls and plates to match the dishes, so the same inn serves a different dinner in March and in November.

At a ryokan you do not order. The kitchen plans one menu for the night, adjusted for anything you told it in advance, and the courses follow each other at the pace you eat.

The courses, in order

No two kitchens follow quite the same sequence, and the names vary, but a ryokan dinner usually runs like this.

• Sakizuke: a small appetiser, often with an aperitif
• Hassun: a tray of seasonal morsels that sets the theme of the meal
• Mukozuke: sashimi, the fish of the region
• Wanmono: a clear soup in a lidded lacquer bowl
• Yakimono: something grilled, usually fish
• Takiawase or nimono: vegetables simmered in stock
• Agemono: tempura or another fried dish, on some menus
• Gohan, tome-wan and ko no mono: rice, miso soup and pickles, which close the savoury part
• Mizumono: fruit or a small sweet

The season, and the place

The best kaiseki tastes of where you are. In winter the inns of the Sea of Japan coast build dinner around crab: Kofuyuden Beniya serves an Echizen crab kaiseki, Nishimuraya Honkan Matsuba crab from November to March. In the hills north of Kyoto, Miyamasou cooks tsumikusa, plants gathered on the mountain that day. Takefue's monthly kaiseki is of Kumamoto produce; Wasure no Sato Gajoen grows the vegetables and raises the chickens for its own Satsuma country dinner; Yoyokaku serves Genkai fish on Karatsu's Ryuta kiln ware.

These are the places where dinner is a reason to go, not simply a part of the stay.

Miyamasou

Takefue

Kofuyuden Beniya

In your room, or at a table

The classic ryokan serves dinner in your room, at a low table, course by course, often by the attendant who looks after you. Many inns now serve it in a private dining room instead, or in a restaurant, sometimes with a choice of a counter. Neither is better; in-room dining is the more private, a dining room the easier for anyone who finds sitting on the floor for two hours hard. Many will set a table with chairs if asked: Sekitei, for one.

Which inns on our list serve dinner in your room as the rule, and which only in some rooms, is below.

Vegetarians, allergies and dislikes

Kaiseki stocks are made with dashi, which usually contains fish, so a true vegetarian dinner needs a kitchen that plans for it. Some inns can: Araya Totoan makes vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free dinners on request, Gora Kadan vegetarian and gluten-free, Kinnotake vegetarian or vegan with three days' notice. Others cannot at all: Tawaraya, Yagyu-no-Sho and Tsuruko make no vegetarian dinner, and Yamagata The Takinami no vegetarian or vegan one.

Allergies are taken seriously everywhere, but only if declared in advance; tell us when you book and we pass them on in Japanese, with what you can and cannot eat.

Dinner times

Dinner starts at a fixed hour, usually between 17:30 and 19:30, and arriving late shortens or loses it. Choose a sitting with time for a bath first, and if your journey is long, an earlier train rather than a later dinner. At Tawaraya, missed meals are not refunded.