Japanese Fine Dining Menu Template

Before embarking on menu design, the first thing to do is get the dishes right. No matter your menu’s grandeur, you’re doomed to losses if people don’t like what it sells. To sell what people want, you should know their favourite dishes.

As a Japanese fine dining restaurant, Japanese people are likely to make up a large or significant portion of your guests. Hence, don’t claim to sell Japanese fine dining dishes only for your customers to find a lot of non-Japanese dishes on your menu. You may need a restaurant consultant to help with this.

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Below are our top three most common Japanese dishes you can display on any of the Menuzen Japanese fine dining menu templates. However, you should note that these are traditional dishes, and you may need to make slight modifications to suit your Japanese fine dining cuisine.

1. Sushi

This rice dish starts with cooking white rice and adding certain ingredients, including sugar and vinegar. Sushi doesn’t use many components; the most visible nutritional information is carbs, vitamins, and minerals. However, you can serve it with proteinous dishes like unagi and teriyaki chicken (we’ll discuss these two briefly).

Sushi comes in many shapes and sizes. The trickiest part of preparing sushi, such as maki rolls, is rolling the rice into the shape you'll want, with the veggies and protein ingredients at the centre of the roll. Chefs who know Japanese cooking shouldn’t have any problems making sushi, whether traditionally or by adding some innovative elements. On the surface, it seems basic, but you would be surprised how many Japanese natives miss this dish when they travel abroad.

2. Unagi

Unagi is a popular Japanese dish but not every Japanese cook can make it correctly. In fact, there are claims that it takes a chef at least three years of teaching to learn how to make this dish properly.

This dish is made from eel with the bones removed and the flesh cut into sizable flat parts. Sharp sticks pierce through the thick flesh of each piece to keep it flat while grilling. The meat is dipped into a seasoned sauce (made with soy sauce, sugar, and mirin) and grilled until it turns light brown with black spots. You may choose to serve it with a wide variety of other dishes, and it’s a perfect item on any Japanese fine dining menu template you choose to work with.

‍3. Teriyaki Chicken

To make teriyaki chicken the traditional Japanese way, you need the following ingredients: chicken, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sugar, honey, cucumbers, rice vinegar, and cornstarch.

You start by removing any bones in your chicken, placing the meat in a dish and adding the following seasonings: ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and sugar. Cover the dish and let it sit for about an hour or two for the meat to absorb some of the ingredients. The next step is to chop up some cucumbers and put them in a dish.

Sprinkle salt on the cucumber and mix thoroughly to ensure every piece is salted. Let it sit for 8–10 minutes to allow the cucumbers to release water through osmosis. Take out your cucumbers and pour out the excess water afterwards. Then, use a kitchen towel to further dry the cucumbers, and add rice vinegar and sugar.

Now, you’re ready to cook the seasoned chicken and serve it with the cucumber and boiled rice.

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Fine dining restaurants are known to offer unique dishes to their diners, though the underlying recipe remains the same. These are the three most authentic Japanese dishes popular in Japanese fine dining restaurants.

1. Kimchi Nabe

This dish in Japan is associated with winter. The ingredients include dashi, meat (usually pork belly), tofu, onions, cabbage, garlic, sake, salt, sesame oil, miso, kimchi, and mushrooms. Everything goes into the same pot and simmers until the pork is thoroughly cooked. You’re free to use any kind of vegetable for this Japanese dish and may choose to serve it alongside other dishes like rice.

2. Yaki Udon

Yaki udon is one of the simplest Japanese dishes to make. Its ingredients are onions, cabbage, carrot, mushrooms, spring onions, meat (usually pork belly, but you may also use chicken, beef, or seafood like squid and shrimp), noodles, vegetable oil, kosher salt, and black pepper. The first step is to chop your veggies.

Warm your noodles to hydrate them before mixing with the other ingredients. Also, you’ll need to fry the pork before adding the veggies and mushrooms since meat takes longer to cook. Add the rest of the vegetables and flavourings to cook and create a cohesive delicious yaki udon.‍

3. Egg and Tofu Miso Soup

The ingredients include dashi, onions, tofu, spring onions, eggs, and white miso paste. While making this dish, add dashi to a pot of water and bring it to a boil. Afterwards, introduce onions, tofu, and white miso paste. Add your beaten eggs to the broth next and cook the mix until the eggs coagulate.

Overall, this is essentially a side dish you can pair with others, like boiled rice.

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Japanese cuisine has many flavours, the most common of which are miso, kinako, wasabi, sakura, tochiotome, yuzu, soy sauce, matcha, mirin, salt, pepper, honey, ginger, garlic, onions, spring onions, and red bean. Note that typically a lot of green tea is drank. Some of these flavours are specially prepared from several ingredients via a fixed process. They’re used to prepare recipes like okonomiyaki, shabu shabu, miso soup, oden, yakitori, natto, udon, wagashi, takoyaki, onigiri, soba, tofu, sukiyaki, unagi, sashimi, among many others.

We’ve already seen more than a dozen typical Japanese dishes above. In addition to variations of the ones already mentioned, other typical Japanese fine dining dishes include modifications of tempura, yatsuhashi, ramen, kushiage, tonkatsu, hiyashi chuka, and kaiseki.

The beauty of a menu layout depends on the person looking at it — it’s totally subjective. Everyone has their preferences regarding design, and a menu is no different. What you consider a good design can be the worst in someone else’s opinion.

Your Japanese fine dining menu design idea must consider clarity, readability, and psychology. No beautiful menu isn’t very clear or legible, to begin with. Ultimately, your Japanese menu layout should subtly promote your best dishes more than the others without stifling them altogether.

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