Izanami Restaurant

Izanami sits on Hyde Park Road attached to Ten Thousand Waves Spa, and the alpine forest view is real, but the kitchen doesn't need the scenery to make its case. This is izakaya food that keeps pushing past the form's usual boundaries: apple kimchi salad, wagyu short ribs finished with parsnip-pear puree, croquettes stuffed with beet and shiso. None of that reads as gimmick. It reads as a kitchen that knows the genre well enough to bend it.

The sake list matches the ambition of the food. Staff can walk you through why the unpasteurized sake tastes brighter than the rest of the huge selection, or why the ice in your whisky was flown in from Japan specifically to melt slower. That's the kind of detail a restaurant only bothers with when it actually cares whether you notice.

Service can wobble — a few reports of slow or brusque nights cut against an otherwise strong record for hospitality and value. It hasn't cost the restaurant its standing. Izanami has landed a James Beard semifinalist nod and made this year's Michelin selection. The croquettes alone are worth the drive up the hill.