15/16 September holiday? Takayama queries

Most Takayama ryokans are fully booked on 15-16 September, but we managed to book a chain hotel near the station. Wanted to check if we would be able to get dinner easily on those two nights, or whether we should reserve half board dinners at our hotel? Hoping to try authentic Kaiseki meals, but if it will be difficult to get reservations elsewhere, we might have no choice but to eat at our hotel.

Holiday or not, you generally need a reservation for a kaiseki dinner. I would be quite suspicious of the quality of a kaiseki restaurant that can whip up 12+ dishes without advance notice.

Kakusho is a nice restaurant serving Kaiseki ryori. You can make a booking through byfood
https://www.byfood.com/restaurant/kakusho-1286?via=visitjapan-vegetari...

more info about the restaurant:
https://visitjapan-vegetarian.com/the-best-guide-to-the-vegan-friendly...

Thank you, will check it out. If there are any other reliable websites to search for restaurants in Takayama or make reservations please feel free to share as well.

One of the local specialty is Hida beef. You could have a yakiniku on one of your nights there. There are many yakiniku restaurants in Takayama, and you should be able to find dinner without booking, if you are willing to queue or arrive early.

For booking online, Tabelog lists many of them, but only a few can be booked online for your dates (not sure the link below will work). It put 18:00 as the reservation time as I could not find any at 19:00. Restaurants open quite early for dinner in Takayama, at 17:00~17:30.

https://tabelog.com/rstLst/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&pal=gifu&LstPrf=A2104&LstAr...

If it doesn't, here is the link to the yakiniku category
https://tabelog.com/gifu/A2104/A210401/R5849/rstLst/yakiniku/

Another strategy if you can't phone is to make the reservation in person (go to the restaurant earlier in the day, or the day before). I have done that multiple times, when a restaurant I really wanted to visit was full on my first try.