Yakitori Nishimura (やき鳥 西むら)

Chef Koji Nishimura, born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1971, trained for roughly a decade each at an Osaka hotel restaurant and a dedicated yakitori shop before opening his own restaurant in Ube in 2010, later relocating to its current site in November 2022. The thirteen-seat counter, carved from a single slab of ginkgo wood, serves an omakase course built around the rare Takasaka chicken from Kyoto. Selected for the Tabelog Hyakumeiten’s yakitori WEST ranking in both 2024 and 2025, the reservation-only, smoke-free restaurant has become a destination in a city not typically associated with high-end yakitori.