The full story is up on the Japan Times website. Here are a few more visuals to go with it...
Roppongi Nouen (that's Japanese for "farm") is no gimmick. The connection with the soil is genuine: It is actually run by people from farming families, who are proud of their rural roots and hope to make the Japanese countryside seem as chic as, say, Tuscany, Dordogne or Napa.
The first thing that grabs your attention is the handsome rough-textured wall by the entrance to the dining room. The bands of hand-packed mud are made from different kinds of soil sent from all over Japan, from Okinawa up to the far north.
Beyond that is the dining room, with its simple furniture, whitewashed walls and glimpses of the open kitchen. It's simple but sophisticated, compact and comfortable and, as likely as not, filled with a warm, happy buzz of conversation.
The cooking is best described as "country-casual," well put together and basically Japanese in inspiration though with a few inventive flourishes.
There are many good reasons to order a la carte, high among them the venison jerky, which we nibbled on with great enjoyment as we scanned the menu.
Given the care lavished on the vegetables here, the mixed salad is as good as you'd expect. Ours had fresh herbs mixed in with the usual salad greens, plus tomatoes of three different colors: juicy red chunks; one-bite orange cherry tomatoes; and, also whole, slightly larger purple-black Toscana tomatoes fresh off the vine.
Just about anything from the grill is going to taste great here, whether it's the yakitori-style grilled chicken (basted with piquant-citron yuzu-kosho paste)...
...the koji-marinated grilled Miyaji pork; or the farmhouse sausages...
One item that didn't work for us was the thick, Korean-style chijimi pancake made with grated yamato-imo yam. It's an interesting idea, but the it tasted too much of raw tororo yam that even a jug-full of gravy-like sauce failed to disguise...
No such problem with the selection of nabe hot-pots. Our favourite to date was a spring version featuring hamaguri clams with bamboo shoots and asparagus spears, cooked in a stock with freshly harvested green tea leaves.
The rice at Nouen tastes great — whether you order it simply as onigiri rice balls...
...or cooked up in ceramic casseroles...
And then there is the chicken curry — it's colourful, reassuringly spicy and highly recommended (though you'll probably need to order extra rice to go with all that flavourful juice)...
Desserts are simple, usually either something Japanese, such as warabi-mochi; or the home-made gelato...
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Nouen's 'Eat For Japan' program. Though it's over now, the results are up on the top page of their website. Outstanding job. Respect!
