FROM OUR KITCHEN VOL.1

Thoughts of the kitchen crew

Hotel Indigo “neighborhood stories” are about the unique landscape, culture, history, and community in the vicinity of the hotel. Each of the hotels opened by Hotel Indigo in countries around the world incorporates such neighborhood stories and provides them to guests in the form of hotel interiors, designs, highly individualistic services, and restaurant experiences. Here, we present a series of neighborhood stories revolving around foodstuffs from the kitchen crew of the Riverside Kitchen & Bar.

VOL 1

Neighborhood stories: Exploration & pursuit of the history, community, culture, and nature in the vicinity of the hotel, and presentation of the same to our guests. This can even be termed the DNA that is common to all Hotel Indigo hotels, which can be found in about 120 locations around the world.

We chose the Gora district of Hakone to be the site of the first Hotel Indigo in Japan, and committed ourselves to relate little-known stories about the district that pique curiosity in addition to its neighborhood stories.

We feel the same way about foodstuffs. We endeavor to source the foodstuffs used in the dishes we serve from suppliers that are within a radius of about 10 kilometers around the hotel, as far as possible. This is not simply out of a desire for fresh ingredients. Besides our wish to be a hotel that can exist in harmony with the people in the area, it is prompted by our aspiration to have our guests feel and experience our linkage with the land through our cuisine.

Fortunately, the Gora area, in which the hotel is located, has an environment that features the waters of Sagami Bay and the sun-bathed greenery of Ashigara, and therefore holds excellent prospects for an abundant supply of nature’s bounty from land and sea. We asked ourselves, what kind of food would convey little-known stories of Gora that pique curiosity? And what items from this bounty would be the best ingredients for preparing this food?

We members of the kitchen crew decided to begin by making a journey in search of foodstuffs before completing the menu.

As a result, we managed to find an abundance of fresh foodstuffs (of the sort that were as yet unknown even to gourmands).

From now on, we are going to tell you about the kind of neighborhood materials we members of the Hotel Indigo kitchen crew found on our journey, and how we are preparing them and serving them to guests.

As we start the tale of our journey to explore foodstuffs here, we members of the kitchen crew would be delighted if you are moved by the little-known stories of Hakone Gora that pique the curiosity in the process, and come to visit our hotel as a result. We are eagerly waiting to welcome you with local cuisine.

*To be continued in Vol. 2