Ca'enne

With an altitude of 1,200 m, the Tateshina Plateau is situated at the foot of the majestic Yatsugatake Mountains that divide Nagano and Yamanashi Prefectures. It’s a chef’s paradise; an abundance of natural ingredients can be found in the surrounding areas, especially mushrooms and vegetables like mountain angelica and nettles. It’s a significant part of the reason why Chef Noriyuki Usui started Ca’enne — a shortlisted restaurant on the Japan Times’ top Destination Restaurants 2024 — in its current location. When he is free, he forages for ingredients in the surrounding forests, and supplements them with herbs from his own garden. Whatever of his top-quality meat is not provided by local hunters is instead sourced from nearby farms, such as lamb from Shinshu and unagi (freshwater eel) from Okaya in Nagano, as well as Kaiju Shamo chicken from Yamanashi. All these come together beautifully thanks to Chef Usui’s impeccable skill in Italian cuisine. After graduating from university, he trained in several Italian restaurants in Tokyo, before moving to Italy in 2009, where he served as a chef in the Michelin-recognized Ristorante Paolo Teverini. He then fell in love with prosciutto — dry-cured ham — and transferred to the Michelin-starred Antica Corte Pallavicina to perfect the art of making it. In the rustic wooden interiors of the log cabin that Ca’enne makes its home in, Chef Usui expertly brings together traditionally Japanese ingredients like miso (which he ferments himself in-house) and Italian staples, with a particular standout being his personally made prosciutto. Made with Masumi sake lees from a brewery in nearby Suwa City, the prosciutto’s texture is soft, but surprises the palate with its depth and richness of flavor. The benefit of the log cabin, adds Chef Usui, is that it shrugs off the spatial limitations of an urban restaurant kitchen. The centerpiece of Ca’enne’s kitchen is a huge, blazing wood-fired hearth, over which Chef Usui infuses his meats and fish with a beautiful, smoky aroma and golden brown color.