Authentic Hotel-Quality Flavor: Easy to Prepare at Home, Anytime
The World of Delicacies Vol. 5
Keita Goto, Head Chef, Hotel Products Division
RIHGA Royal Hotel
For half a century, the Seafood Pilaf has been cherished as a signature taste of the RIHGA Royal Hotel, and now it’s available as a frozen food product. Development took nearly two years to complete, drawing on the experience and skills of Head Chef Keita Goto, who has spent his career pursuing the hotel’s distinctive taste across many of its departments.
A signature dish worth staying for
Snow crab claws packed with flesh, leg meat, plump shrimp and scallops, whole clams in the shell, and more—all piled on so generously the rice is barely visible beneath. Guests often say about the Seafood Pilaf: “It’s irresistible how it all comes together with the fragrant butter rice infused with umami and sweetness.” The dish was created in 1977 by a restaurant chef at the RIHGA Royal Hotel Osaka. Since then, it has been beloved for half a century as a specialty so iconic that some guests say they stay at the hotel just to eat it.
The story behind the frozen Seafood Pilaf
“We had been selling the Seafood Pilaf as a takeout item at Gourmet Boutique Melissa, but we wanted people who live far away to be able to easily enjoy it as well, so in 2022 we began developing a frozen version. This was right after I took up the position of Head Chef in the Hotel Products Division.
No matter how many test batches we ran, however, we couldn’t recreate the fluffy texture of the pilaf rice, and we ended up halting development for a time. As we continued investigating where the problem lay, it occurred to me that the moisture content of the ingredients—shrimp, scallops, crab, mussels, and so on—might be the key. We resumed testing, adjusting the cooking level for each type of seafood individually, and successfully achieved a fluffy texture by steaming the butter rice with moisture released from the other ingredients during heating in a home microwave. To allow excess steam to escape, we chose a container with a small hole in the lid. We also changed the type of miso added as a secret ingredient, and adjusted the amounts of ginger, soy sauce, and other seasonings.
As a result, we achieved a refined, traditional flavor, rich and full of umami. It took nearly two years before we were ready to offer it at Gourmet Boutique Melissa and in our online shop.”
Drawing on experience at home and abroad
“I joined The Royal Hotel in 1984. I worked at Restaurant Garden in the RIHGA Royal Hotel Osaka, where I spent over five years learning the fundamentals of cooking under Head Chef Matsumoto, who was highly regarded by guests at the time. During that period I worked in pastry, hors d’oeuvres, fish, meat, and charcoal grill. After transferring to the banquet kitchen, I spent nearly six years as a saucier, a key role focused primarily on sauce-making. At 29, I studied abroad in France, where I trained in cooking and service at a three-star restaurant in the Champagne region.
In 1999, I was appointed chef of two restaurants—the Sky Restaurant inside the University of Osaka Hospital and Restaurant Minerva on the University of Osaka’s Suita Campus—and I learned both how difficult and how fun it is to come up with menus that delight a wide range of guests. In 2007, I moved to the RIHGA Royal Hotel Kyoto. After serving in roles including chef at Gourmand Tachibana, specializing in kaiseki-style French cuisine, I was appointed Executive Chef. For more than 40 years, I have pursued the hotel’s flavor across a variety of departments.
My experience is now being put to use in developing products offered at Gourmet Boutique Melissa: carrying on tradition, while repeatedly refining our offerings to meet the needs of the times and continuing to develop even more delicious products… I’m convinced that’s why we’ve earned the support of so many customers.”
Incorporating feedback from customers and the next generation
Inside Gourmet Boutique Melissa, where you can enjoy shopping like browsing a French marché, you’ll find an array of hotel-made tastes: art-like cakes showcasing our pastry chefs’ skill, a wide variety of breads, baked sweets ideal for gifts, smoked items made from carefully selected ingredients, and prepared foods spanning Japanese, Western, and Chinese cuisines—more than 300 kinds in all. For every item, we’re constantly reassessing not only the taste, but also the lineup and variations as we pursue better products. We also actively incorporate customer feedback and young chefs’ ideas into details like the containers for salad dressings and sauces for meat dishes, which are packaged separately so you can adjust the flavor to your liking.
For example, our popular Market Salad got a new container in fall 2025. It’s a luxurious salad that lets you enjoy as many as ten different toppings at once, evoking the fun of a market. Previously, the toppings were placed directly on top of the fresh vegetables, but this was improved by adding a divider plate so roast beef and smoked salmon don’t touch the greens directly and transfer their flavors or aromas. Our Roast Lamb with Couscous is packaged in a playful skillet-shaped container.
Our motto is to delight customers with products that are beautiful to look at and truly delicious to eat. Going forward, we’ll continue to ambitiously develop new items with carefully selected ingredients and cooking methods you can’t replicate at home, delivering smiles to customers with flavors that only a hotel can provide.
RIHGA Royal Hotel
Keita Goto, Head Chef, Hotel Products Division
In 1984, Chef Goto graduated from the Food Studies Department at Tokushima Prefectural Komatsushimanishi High School and joined The Royal Hotel, Limited. After working at Restaurant Garden at the RIHGA Royal Hotel Osaka, he studied the fundamentals of cooking under Head Chef Matsumoto. He then handled wedding and party cuisine under Executive Chef Harubi Yonezu and Head Chef Miyagawa. In 1995, he traveled to France for an overseas training program. There, he learned cooking and service from Mr. Boyer at the three-star restaurant Les Crayères in the Champagne region. After returning to Japan, he was assigned to Restaurant Chambord at the RIHGA Royal Hotel Osaka. In 1999, he concurrently served as chef at two restaurants at Osaka University: Restaurant Minerva and the Sky Restaurant. He then went on to serve as Head Chef at the RIHGA Grand Hotel, Executive Chef at the RIHGA Royal Hotel Kyoto, and Executive Chef at the RIHGA Royal Hotel Tokyo. Since 2021, he has served as Head Chef of the RIHGA Royal Hotel’s Hotel Products Division, primarily responsible for product development for Gourmet Boutique Melissa.
Reporting and text by Akiko Kobayashi
RIHGA Royal Hotel Osaka, Vignette Collection
Gourmet Boutique Melissa
Phone: +81(0)6-6448-2412 (direct)
1st Floor, 5-3-68 Nakanoshima,Kita-ku,Osaka 530-0005 Japan
10:00 〜19:00
Open all year round
