Ryotei Kuki
B · 7.1 / 10right inn, right place
A seven-room modern build by Zaborin's architect, put up in 2009 to revitalize old Esashi, and the only high-end option there. The kitchen delivers and the town is worth the wander, but the walled-in rooms waste the seaside site, and KI-NRT puts it a notch below the top ryokans in Japan, a high-quality stop where he didn't expect to find one and not a destination in itself.
Scores
Food 4.5 / 5
Dinner is in private koshitsu rooms, and the kitchen cooks southern Hokkaido ingredients simply and extremely well: sashimi as good as it gets, a marvelous grilled herring caught just offshore and basted with a sweet sauce, and a crisp, light abalone and maitake tempura. The one letdown was the lamb from the owner's own farm, tough and short on umami. Breakfast was plain, and the quality of everything, down to the Assabu-cho rice, was incredible.
Bath 3.5 / 5
Each of the seven rooms has its own indoor onsen bath, straight from the source and not recirculated, from the spring chairman Tanada drilled more than 1,400 metres to find, having agreed to build only if there was onsen under the land. That indoor tub is all there is, though: no large public bath, no private or rental baths, and no open-air bath, which KI-NRT regrets with the ocean right there.
Service
Nobody in the thread has written about the service here, beyond KI-NRT learning the inn's origins from a conversation with Mr. Tanada, its chairman, who had run an electronics store and a farm and went to a university to learn the hospitality business before opening it.
Room 3.5 / 5
All seven rooms are the same 63 m² Japanese-Western suite: a small tatami room, a larger living area with a leather sofa, a bedroom with Western beds and the indoor onsen bath, in a muted, minimalist modern Japanese style. There is only one sink, the Toto toilet is an older model, and the concrete privacy wall cuts off the lower half of the view, so you see the sky and parts of the ocean and marina only if you stand up.
Place 3 / 5
Kuki is a seaside property in Esashi, one of the oldest towns in Hokkaido, with the Kaiyo Maru warship replica on one side and the preserved Inishie Kaido street on the other, and the historic port is very walkable. Large rocks and a concrete perimeter wall with no tall vegetation ring the property, stylish but leaving an inn beside the ocean with hardly any view of it, which KI-NRT regrets. Inside there is little beyond the lounge.
Getting there
- Hakodate — ~1h30, 0 transfers (estimated). ~90 min by car from Hakodate Airport/Station to Esashi on the southwest coast.
- New Chitose — ~3h30, 0 transfers (estimated). ~3.5 hr by car from New Chitose Airport (CTS) around the Oshima Peninsula.
Sources
FlyerTalk review #681 · TripAdvisor 4★ (November 2025) · #564 (thread mentions)