tokyo food file

Noma Japan: excellence on high, course by course

 

Noma Japan has opened! We went for lunch on Day 3 (January 12) and it was stupendous. What a setting, what a meal. And what a chef!

My feature introducing this remarkable, unprecedented project ran in The Japan Times  earlier in the month. Now my review is out and you can read it here… 

But this blog post represents the definitive blow-by-blow, course-by-course run-down of our meal. I'll be adding/fine-tuning the dish descriptions a bit more over the next few days, but here we go… 

Please realize, this is not a definitive account of Noma Japan. That's because chef René Redzepi is already changing and adapting, evolving and swapping in new dishes.

I find that even a week later, I'm still thinking – still dreaming – of that exeptional banquet. For those unable to make it over here, please enjoy vicariously!

 

 

You can’t help but be wowed by that setting. From the 37th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, you look out toward the distant hills and the unmistakable snow-capped, sunset-silhouetted cone of Mt. Fuji. It is hard to think of a more auspicious backdrop as you settle in for the three-hour, 16-course banquet.

That view is immediately forgotten, though, as soon as the floor staff start serving the food…

 

Course 1: The magic kicks in from the very first dish, jumbo shrimp served atop a platter of ice. They are superb, premium sashimi quality and so fresh they’re still dancing their final quivers.

But it is the seasoning – "flavors of the Nagano forest" the menu calls it – that defines this dish. A dozen tiny wild black ants are carefully arranged on the shrimp, their little pinpricks of sharp acidity acting as a perfect accent for the sweet, pink flesh.

 Shima-ebi wth flavours of Nagano forest

"None of the other courses are as provocative, although ants are used so routinely at Noma, their presence should come as no surprise…"

Although the shrimp served on the day we were there were shima-ebi – a brace of them each – other varieties are also being used, depending on whatever is available on the day.

 

Course 2: Four varieties of citrus – bampeiyu (pomelo); mikan (mandarin orange); and two types of buntan (from Kochi) – adorned with pine salt, kinome (sansho leaf), slices of piquant Okinawan long peppers pickled in apple vinegar, dressed with an oil made from roasted Rishiri kombu seaweed.

 Citrus and long pepper

 

Course 3: Monkfish liver that has been smoked, frozen and shaved onto crisp bread – from baguettes baked by the folks at Sucre Coeur in Osaka. You've never seen an-kimo like this before: outrageously good.

Shaved monkfish liver

 

We didn't get the wine pairing, but by this time we were ready for a glass or two. Starting with this one…

 

Course 4: Cuttlefish "noodles" in the style of zaru soba. Served chilled – "We just can't do that in Europe", says René, "people demand their food hot!" – they came with an iced broth of rose petals from Ishigaki (Okinawa).

Koika cuttlefish "Soba", with rose petal dip 

 

Course 5: Clam pie. Premium shijimi (freshwater clams) shucked individually by hand and painstakingly arranged on a tart crust infused with kombu seaweed and seasoned with a sharply, deeply acidic paste derived from wild kiwi fruit (one of the chefs also mentioned grated wasabi in this, but it wasn't there for us).

Unbelievably intricate work... René told us that there are 45 to 50 of the clams per portion. And it takes 6-8 chefs over 4 hours to shuck and clean 7 kgs of the suckers, starting early in the morning. "We only do it because we think it's worth it" he told us... 

 Fresh water clam and wild kiwi

 

Course 6: Even René's take on tofu is a revelation. Freshly ground from organic beans, the soy milk is set with a special coagulant, steamed for 20 minutes and topped with dainty white morsels of walnut collected last fall from wild trees. There was a layer of miso and parsley sauce at the very bottom.  

 Tofu, just steamed with wild walnuts

Tofu will always taste like tofu. But this is some of the sweetest in all Japan.

 

Time for some sake: This was an amazing unfiltered, naturally feremented brew from Terada Honke, in Chiba.

 

Course 7: At this point sous-chef Thomas Frebel comes out and tells us he has a dish for us that they're still working on. No complaints whatsoever about being guineapigs for this experiment – especially since it involves uni (sea urchin)... 

 Sea urchin, maitake and cabbage

Inside the cabbage leaf, a generous serving of Hokkaido bafun uni, seasoned with a rich sauce made from maitake mushrooms and miso. Superb. A great contrast of textures, even if the central spine of the cabbage was a bit too fibrous. 

 

Course 8: Probably the least spectacular of the dishes to look at (and the hardest to get a good image of). But it was undoubtedly one of the highlights.

Scallops dried for two days are made into a thick fudge, with beeswax "and a little bit of butter" (as served in CPH). But the Japan version gets an exta treatment: it gets aerated into a light, spongey texture. Underneath this there were crunchy little beech  nuts (foraged in the autumn) and kombu seaweed oil, this one darker and richer than the kombu oil served with the citrus earlier. What a dish. This one blew us all away!

 Scallop dried for two days, beech nuts and kelp

 

Course 9: Slivers of Hokkori pumpkin, a delectable variety of winter squash that was simmered with kelp and arranged on the plate with fronds of kombu seaweed and salted-dried cherry blossoms. This was served with a milky koji-based sauce accented with cherry tree wood oil. Definitely one of the prettiest of all the dishes. And one of the tastiest.

 Hokkori pumpkin, cherry wood oil and salted cherry blossoms

 

Course 10: Then another jaw-dropper. Mysteriously beautiful, metallic shiny black leaves, which René just described to us as "origami garlic flowers". Of all the dishes, this was the one that brought it home just how much work had gone into this meal.

Garlic flower

They were made from black (fermented) garlic, were flecked with salt, and had a texture somewhere between liquorice and fruit leather. We just picked them up and nibbled… and nibbled… trying to pin down the flavour. It wasn't "garlicky" at all, but it did have hints of that rich allium sweetness you get when you cook down garlic low and slow. Intriguing. And so good!

 

Course 11:  Preserved egg with root vegetables. Slices of lotus root; kuwai (a.k.a. three-leaf arrowroot); mukago (propagules of yama-imo yams); chorogi (Chinese artichoke). The egg yolk is "cured in beef" (now you know)…

Technically this was one of the best courses. In practice, it turned out to be a bit too substantial, sapping our appetite ahead of the main course. But each of these starchy corms added a bit too much heft to the meal, at a stage where we were just about to embark on the "main" dish. Nice gari-style ginger pickles with them, though, to perk up the palate.

 Roots and starches with ginger

 

Sake part 2: Inemankai, from the community of Ine on the Tango Peninsula in northern Kyoto Prefecture. Sweetish, but with a nice clear acidity too. And a beautiful reddish tinge that comes from the akamai (red rice) they use to ferment it.

 

Course 12: Wild duck, caught by the traditional way, in nets. Then hung and dry-aged for three weeks, roasted and served whole – though already carved. Superb!

Wild duck and matsubusa berries

Beautiful flavorful flesh and firm texture. Nicely complemented with a dip prepared from wild matsubusa berries (aka Schisandra repanda)…

 

… and with our second wine of the meal.

 

Course 13: Turnip. "Cooked in yeast" was the initial explanation. But it went a lot deeper than that, involving the mycellium of cultivated shiitake. And a beautiful green broth made with parsley. 

 Yeast and turnip cooked in shiitake

 

Course 14: Rice and sake lees. The first of the dessert courses was also a standout. Crisp rice starch wafers, on a gelato of sake-kasu (lees), on a base of cooked mochi rice (sweet rice) – with a sauce prepared from foraged wood sorrel (oxalis), which is one of the wild herbs that were from the start a signature of Noma in CPH.

 Rice

 

Course 15: Dessert part 2: yaki-imo sweet potato. Cooked down "just about all day" in raw sugar until amazingly caramelized. Best sweet potato ever.

                                         Sweet potato simmered in raw sugar all day

It was served with a beautiful green dip, also from the wild kiwis (but sweeter and less acidic than the paste with the clam pie).

 

Course 16: The very final offering was a treat to the eyes as well as the taste buds. Fermented mushrooms, enrobed in chocolate. Served with little twigs of wild cinnamon to chew on with our Tim Wendelboe coffee. Minds and palates well and truly blown.

 Wild cinnamon and fermented mushroom

 

This is more than a labour of love by René and his team. It's an insane, madcap project that is really pushing the envelope on what can be done with Japanese ingredients – and what the Noma team can achieve.

We were there on Day Three, and the effort and intensity that has gone into the project was clear on René's face as he worked alongside the wait staff, bringing us dishes, explaining the ingredients and the processes.

 

As I wrote in my review: 

"Less than two weeks in and the menu is already evolving, as Redzepi adjusts and swaps in new dishes. By the time Noma Japan comes to a close (on Feb. 14), everything is likely to be even more finely honed.

"Even after that, the ripples from this bold, imaginative experiment will continue to spread. Redzepi sees this as a step to take Noma in Copenhagen to the next level. Meanwhile, here in Japan, a generation of chefs and customers have had their eyes and palates opened wide, beyond the confines of Japanese tradition.

"A magnificent success."

 

 Team Noma hard at work…

   … and then breathing out at the end of service: Head chef Daniel Giusti (right) and sous chef Junichi Takahashi. Great job guys!

And this was our menu: 

 

PS: For another take on Noma Japan in a very different style, check out this fantastic review in emoji by Tejal Rao, who is the restaurant critic for Bloomberg.

The original post is here…

seasonal brews 1: Oiso Kotatsu-Mikan Belgian White & Sake-kasu Golden Ale

There's no better way to welcome in early spring than with some good seasonal brews and eats...

Down in Fujisawa, at Komazawa Shuzo's Mokichi Craft Beer, we sipped on Shonan Beers's early-spring special, Oiso Kotatsu-Mikan Belgian White (that's the pint on the right; the one on the left is the year-round IPA.)

The mikan in the ale are mandarin oranges — the kind you nibble on as you sit around the kotatsu heater in winter — grown on a farm in Oiso, Kanagawa Pref., which is just down the road from the brewery. The fruit adds just a light citrus buzz, nothing too sharp or acidic, so it doesn't overpower the food...

 

Which included a salad with hamaguri clams, strips of udo and nanohana greens...

 

…as well as deep-fried new-season bamboo shoots with batter-fried morsels of kasago scorpion fish — an ale batter, of course — on a tasty sauce americaine. 

 

Shonan Beer is producing some excellent new brews these days. We also tried this little number (on the right): Sake-kasu Golden Ale. It's produced with the addition of some sake lees — what's left after the sake is pressed — giving the ale a slightly more complex yeast profile. Intriguing indeed.

The brew on the left is the real ale chocolate porter. Also excellent.

 

I posted about Mokichi Craft Beer last year here...

And many moons back I wrote a column about the Komazawa brewery in my Japan Times column... Well worth the day trip!

 

Happy Snake Year 2012

New Year greetings!

We've rung in the Year of the Snake and now we're sitting around our kotatsu heater, munching on mikan.

Warmth and happiness to one and all in 2013!

Daniel Cox pop-up dinner w/Libushi 里武士

Last weekend, Daniel Cox cooked dinner for me — well, me and a dozen or so other lucky souls who found their way to the obscure venue in Yokohama where he served three nigh-on-impromtu pop-up feasts.  

For those out of the UK gastronomic loop, Dan is the man in charge at Aulis in Cumbria (northern England), which is the research kitchen for L'Enclume, the Michelin two-star, 10/10 restaurant by Simon Rogan. Besides developing the menu, running the restaurant farm and going out foraging, Dan also serves exclusive multi-course chef's table meals at Aulis. That's the kind of dinner we had the other day.

 

Dan was brought over to Japan for a week by Tom and Emi of Libushi — more at their website here — who are based up in Nozawa Onsen, in Nagano Prefecture, where they have a farm. It was a massive opportunity for those of us who can't nip up to Cumbria on a whim, or even to Roganic, the much-lauded limited-edition (two years only) restaurant Rogan set up in London.

Here are a few images from the other evening, with simple descriptions of the dishes. Dan did describe the ingredients and preparations in considerable detail, but you'd have to ask him yourself about the finer points involved...

The venue was a discreet little second-floor cafe space in Yoshidamachi, a grungy but now gentrifying (with plenty of good things happpening) district just to the north of Kannai Station in Yokohama.

 

One long, large table; just over a dozen people sitting on one side; the kitchen space on the other. The pots of herbs and shoots set into the table were grown on the Libushi farm in Nozawa, and most of the produce used in the dinner came from them too.

We sat back and watched as Dan prepared the food, with the help of his sous-chef for the evening, Kensaku Katagiri — a.k.a. Ken-san — from Nozawa Onsen, where he works in the kitchen of his family's hotel.

 

Dan introduced each course, while Emi translated into Japanese, also adding a bit of extra context where necessary.

 

1. First up as an appetizer: Pig and Eel — croquettes of Beniton breed pork (raised in Iida, also in Nagano Pref.) with unagi eel. These were combined and cooked as croquettes, with a crispy deep-fried coating made with potato starch set with tapioca to make it fluff up beautifully. A great starter and an excellent way to kick off the meal.

Here it is, broken open...

 

And this is what we drank with it: Ryugan, a grape related to Koshu, from Colline de Sanctuaire, Nagano.

 

2. Next, another brilliant dish: red shrimp on thin home-made crackers, topped with a wicked sauce of mitsuba and English parsley (but grown in Nozawa). A beautiful – and delectable – symbolism: the coming together of the two countries at this event. You can just make out the layer of soft "cheese" that Dan made himself a day or so ahead of the event. 

 

Third course: Hokkaido oyster poached in its shell in ichiban dashi — made with Nozawa spring water and prepared the way Dan learned from umami-master Yoshihiro Murata of Kikunoi. Because it was cooked at a low temperature, it retained its shape perfectly.

Served on a bed of celery and nama-wakame seaweed (from Kagawa Pref.), it was garnished with oka-hijiki and fennel frond, and served in a lacquered bowl intended for miso-shiru (no actual miso in it; that would come later on).

And this is what we were drinking with it: a nifty junmaishu sake (from Nagano of course) called Michelle, after the Beatles ditty.

 

 

Next up: Carpaccio of akami tuna, seasoned with an amazing, aromatic charcoal-smoke oil that Dan prepared from the white ash of premium binchotan charcoal. This was served on a yogurt sauce with fine slivers of kabu turnip, garnished with kaiware daikon spouts and sprinkled with a mix of roasted seeds.

So good it deserves a close-up... Nice lacquerware too!

 

We were served a different sake with this one: Mizuo Hatsuyuki-no-mai (meaning: "dance of the first snow") hiya-oroshi brewed in Nagano. Apparently, the water used by Mizuo to brew its sake is the same Nozawa spring water that is used in all the dishes Dan prepared at this dinner. It's also the same spring that Tom and Emi use for watering their vegetables, herbs and shoots.

 

Course 5 was also very Japanese in inspiration and presentation...

A couple of days previously, Dan said, he'd been out in the forests of Nagano with a professional forager and eventually they came across a huge carpet of nameko, maitake, shimeji and other fungi — more wild mushrooms in one place than he'd ever seen before.

He served the nameko together with scallops that had been lightly smoked (in cherry wood), bathed in a stock prepared from the wild mushrooms in a torigara (chicken wings) base. The garnish was slivers of Nozawa-grown green shiso leaf, and finely grated British hazel nuts.

Course 6: Hirame (flounder) poached in dashi; kabocha puree; baby-leaf nozawana greens; a sauce made from onion, celery and fennel, with some miso in it as well as clam dashi.

The garnish for this was shaved crisp-fried chestnuts, foraged from the Nozawa woods. Lovely.

 

And this is what we drank with it: a very tasty Chardonnay from the St.Cousair winery [in... yes, you guessed, Nagano]

7. The meat course: Wagyu beef — the cut known as zabuton — from cattle raised (also in Nagano Pref.) on a diet of apples, which gives a wonderful sweet aroma to their meat. After long cooking at low temperature, it was seared over the teppan, then sliced and served with a splash of fragrant egoma (shiso) oil.

Dan served it with wedges of beet and red frill mustard leaf, a puree made from apple cider, and a sauce fragrant with the umami of miso (white and hatcho) and sake [and yes, my notes are getting sketchier by the course here!]. 

The drink paired with this one was cider [unfortunately no photo for this, but it was a stonker].

 

 

And finally dessert: freshly made soft sorbet made from the locally-pressed juice of mikan mandarins, which was accompanied by a crisp sponge honeycomb; a puree of sweet potato (grown by Tom and Emi); garnished with a sprig of shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) and sprinkled with a few yellow chrysanthemum petals.

We also had some of that same mikan juice to drink along with dessert. Produced for Ken-san's hotel, it tasted almost as thick and rich as a mango smoothie. No wonder it's called "Superlativ"!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that, basically, was it. What a great meal! We staggered off into the night, just in time for our last train. At least we didn't have to get back from Cumbria...

Thanks again, Dan! And to Tom and Emi: great job!

 

PS: And if you go over to the Libushi site, they've now posted a very cool video taken at this event, showing the tuna dish being plated.

a tasty little springtime "snack" at Ryugin (continued): the denouement

Our little celebratory "snack" at Ryugin closed memorably — and very sweetly indeed.

Following in the much lauded footsteps of the famous Ryugin Candy Apple, this is Chef Yamamoto's new Candy Strawberry.

Just as with the apple, the "strawberry" is nitro-frozen — all the way down to -196° Celsius. That burnished outer shell of candy contains a frozen powder that literally melts in your mouth as it warms up.

And it's served with a hot "jam" — with lots of chunks of the actual fruit — heated to an almost bubbling-hot +99°.

It's such a jewel-like creation it seems a shame to crack it open. But the combination of textures and of course temperatures — a differential of almost 300 degrees — gives for a remarkable taste experience.

Here's what it looks like as the jam gets ladled over the candy...

  

Truth to tell, I think the apple works better. The strawberry is every bit as beautiful, but it lacks the slight underlying tartness of the apple. That jam is very sweet indeed.

But there was another dessert to come, this one rather more subtle on the palate.

A mikan orange — a thin-skinned varietal from Shikoku, Yamamoto's home territory — carved out and filled with tiny morsels of shortbread-like cake, and topped with wedges of the unadorned fruit.

This one is a winner all the way.