A Meal That Begins Outside

From the windows of Villa della Pace, Nanao Bay opens out in one direction and Noto’s wooded hills rise in the other. Chef Hirata chose this place for that view. He wanted to cook in front of it and to give his guests time to take it in. The restaurant and guest rooms form an auberge on the site of a former beach in Shiozu, Nanao; a meal here is part of a longer encounter with the landscape.

Hirata first came to Noto while working at a restaurant in Tokyo that used ingredients from the peninsula. Visits to the people who grew them brought him closer to the fields, the sea, and the rhythms of the region. He eventually moved here to cook near the source. What began as an interest in remarkable produce has become a deeper inquiry into local food culture: the ways Noto has gathered, preserved, and prepared food through changing seasons.

His dishes offer one expression of that approach. Vegetables, herbs, wild plants, and other seasonal ingredients come together in an arrangement that changes with what is growing. Hirata describes beginning to think about food where it is harvested. Its textures and flavors, including bitterness and acidity, suggest what he will do in the kitchen.

The people behind those ingredients are close by. Hirata’s relationships with producers are relationships between neighbors. When a difficult season changes the quality or appearance of a crop, he wants to keep buying it and find a way to give it value through cooking. For him, the producer’s work and the chef’s work belong to the same continuing story.

Villa della Pace has reopened after the 2024 earthquake. Its name evokes peace, but the feeling Hirata hopes guests will find is tangible: a slower passage of time, food connected to the people who made it possible, and the comfort of sitting between sea and hills.