[Stay Review] The Luxurious Breakfast Buffet at Hotel New Akao in Atami

Today I’m introducing a hotel perched at the top of the sheer cliffs over Sagami Bay in Atami, Shizuoka.I’d like to show you the breakfast buffet I enjoyed during my stay at Hotel New Akao.

Hotel New Akao has three dining venues: therestaurant “Bonheur,” the Japanese restaurant “Maiougi,” and the main dining roomNishiki.

Main DiningNishiki is a theater-style restaurant with a sea view through huge floor-to-ceiling windows. I’d heard the breakfast was gorgeous, but is it really?

Let’s take a look!

Theater Restaurant “Main Dining Nishiki”

“Main Dining Nishiki” is a restaurant on the 2nd floor of the Ocean Wing at Hotel New Akao.

The sheer scale of this glamorous, retro-Showa-style theater restaurant is overwhelming.

With a capacity of 500, it’s one of the largest restaurants in the city!

Hotel New Akao has other restaurants that serve breakfast too, but “Main Dining Nishiki” is the venue for both the dinner and breakfast buffets.

Lunch is also available.

Breakfast hours are 7:30–10:00, with last entry at 9:30.

* Prices show the lowest weekday rate before coupons and discounts for 2 guests with dinner and breakfast. Please check the linked site for the latest information.

An Exquisite Breakfast: A Buffet of About 70 Dishes Made with Local Ingredients

Hotel New Akao‘s breakfast is truly something!about 70 gorgeous dishes spanning Japanese, Western, and Chinese cuisine.

At other hotels, breakfast buffets usually top out at 30–50 items, so this is well beyond that!

Salads

The salad bar has lettuce, onion, cherry tomatoes, red radish, macaroni salad, and more.

Some hotels offer only a cheap coleslaw or so, but the salad selection alone is wide here, so you can load up on nutrition first thing in the morning ♪

The carrot dressing was delicious.

Live Kitchen by the Head Chef

A live kitchen where the chef cooks right in front of you.

They serve fried eggs and grilled bacon. Eat them together for double the deliciousness!!

Japanese, Western & Chinese Dishes

The most popular items at breakfast are the seafood bowls: squid, wasabi, and whitebait (shirasu) rice bowls.

Enjoy Shizuoka’s signature seafood first thing in the morning.

Top your rice bowl however you like. They’re quite popular, and sometimes there’s a line!

Odawara kamaboko, made from fresh fish caught in Sagami Bay and quality water flowing down from Hakone.

It has a traditional flavor that goes back to the Edo period.

Izu natto mixed with okra.

Natto is a breakfast staple, often served in small packaged cups, but this one uses local Izu natto with okra added, so you can expect gut-health benefits too ♪

Fried horse mackerel (aji) caught that morning.

Freshly fried aji is even better on a rice bowl or in a sandwich.

On the left is Odawara’s famous bunka-boshi aji (semi-dried horse mackerel).

Said to have originated in the Edo period, Odawara dried fish is known for its light salting that brings out the fresh flavor of the fish.

Nicely browned bacon.

The breakfast-staple sausages. A bit on the fatty side.

Silky scrambled eggs.

Peperoncino pasta with shirasu and green laver.

Peperoncino with shirasu is probably something you can only eat here.

From the left: grilled vegetables piled high, steamed vegetables, and oven-baked salted pork with potatoes.

Plump, juicy shumai.

Bread

Croissants, sliced white bread, dinner rolls, and more.

You can use the white bread to make a sandwich with the fried aji mentioned earlier.

Enjoy the crispy-yet-fluffy texture of the French toast.

Desserts

Lychee and grapefruit.

Lychee is in season from early spring to early summer, so from autumn on, other seasonal fruits line up instead.

The oranges also look fresh and delicious.

Izu-yama momo jelly.

Izu Highland’s specialty “yanmo” (mountain peach) becomes a wobbly jelly!

There’s roll cake too!

Can I really eat this much…?

Drinks

There’s a machine that automatically pours the soft drink you pick on the panel, but this is the first time I’ve seen this type.

If you select a mixed drink, you can choose from six more mixed drink options.

They all look delicious ♪

Coffee and tea are also available.

Plating Examples

Overwhelmed by the roughly 70 items and unable to decide, I ended up plating mostly Japanese-style dishes.

The seafood bowl seemed to be the main attraction and the first thing I wanted to try, so I piled on squid and shirasu!

I also put small portions of side dishes in a circle on a round plate!

My seat was this table seat on the raised level.

The central tables are close to the buffet and easy for plating, but with all the foot traffic they looked less calm, so I chose a seat a bit farther away where I could overlook everything and enjoy an elegant breakfast.

On a clear day, you can see the rock formation “Umanose” and Sagami Bay through the glass windows~.

* Prices show the lowest weekday rate before coupons and discounts for 2 guests with dinner and breakfast. Please check the linked site for the latest information.