tokyo food file

Alain Ducasse at Washoku-do

 

In late January, I was back in Kyoto, this time to attend the Washoku-do symposium, an event — hopefully annual — sponsored by the Japanese government to back the propagation of washoku (Japanese cuisine) around the world.

The event brought together some of Japan’s most revered chefs, including Yoshihiro Murata, of the renowned Kyoto kaiseki restaurant Kikunoi, and Toru Okuda, of Kojyu in Tokyo. 

Several top French chefs were also invited, among them Alain Ducasse — who was also one of the judges in the World Washoku Challenge, a cooking competition for non-Japanese chefs. 

I managed to speak at some length with Chef Ducasse about the event, about the participating chefs in the cooking competition and about his love of washoku.

The full review (in The Japan Times) is here…

 Thanks to Kanako Teshigawara (CREMA) and Alain Ducasse Enterprise for helping to set this up. 

Eater year-end survey 2013: Tokyo Food File pronounces [the illustrated version]

 

 

Every year-end, Eater conducts a year-end survey, canvassing a host of writers, photographers and assorted others – mostly in the US, but also from around the world (and including yours truly) – for their pronouncements on gourmet matters.

The answers are all up there online. But because they are scattered over several separate posts, I have gathered my answers to their survey together here.

 

• Favorite New Restaurants of 2013

A slew of new restaurants opened in Tokyo this year, but none have nailed it for me quite like Anis. Chef Susumu Shimizu proves that, as long as you have superb ingredients and technique (his was honed at Arpege) it doesn’t matter how far you are from the bright lights of the city center.

 

Outside of Japan, two new places that hit all the right notes for me: Clove Club in London; and Amass in Copenhagen. I’m looking forward to repeat visits.

 

 

 

• Spectacles and Disasters of 2013

It wasn’t just the foodies: all of Japan was thrilled that the nation’s traditional cuisine, washoku, was recognized by UNESCO as an intangible World Heritage.

Most were equally dismayed by the ongoing revelations of menu fraud (mostly substituting cheaper ingredients for high-end brand-name food products) — especially at hotels with names that were formerly trusted.

 

 

• The Year’s Best Drinking

Gen Yamamoto’s intimate 8-seater bar feels as tranquil and traditional as a tea ceremony chamber. His artfully constructed fruit and vegetable infusions are structured to the seasons in just the same way as a kaiseki meal. Order a flight of 5 or 7, then sit back for a meditative couple of hours. 

 

 

• What’s Hot, What’s Over 

What’s hot: Casual Gastronomy. It’s all about the food, not the zip code. Prime exemplars: Anis (in Hatsudai); Ata (Shibuya/Daikanyama); Hommage (Asakusa); and Girogiro (Kagurazaka).

 

Also: Restaurants serving “gibier”. The French word has been coopted into Japanese to signify for all game meats, especially wild venison and boar from the Japanese uplands.

 

Also: Gourmet popcorn. Following hard on the heels of the American pancake boom, it has now become essential (for some, at least) to wait in line over 2 hours just to be able to buy popcorn in exotic flavors.

What’s not: Fads die as fast as they are born in Tokyo. For several years, Belgian beer was everywhere. Now it’s getting well overlooked in favor of craft ale, mostly locally brewed.

 

 

• Best and Most Overrated Dining Cities of 2013 

Outside of Tokyo — perennially at the top of my list — San Sebastian remains a tried and true favorite.

 

And I’ve been very pleased to find that London is really starting to deliver on the hype, with a new groundswell of great little restaurants, most of them well removed from the West End.

Kitchen Table (Fitzrovia, London) was also one of my meals of the year. 

 

 

• The Year’s Untold Stories

The elephant in the room that no one is talking about in Tokyo is the impending takeover of Japanese agribusiness by Monsanto, through the forthcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade agreement. Hello GM crops; sayonara traditional agriculture. 

 

 

• Best Meals of 2013

In Tokyo, dinner at Kojyu represents the apogee of contemporary kaiseki. In Kyoto, Mizai encapsulates the deep essence of traditional Kyoto cuisine and hospitality. But the absolute funnest meal of the year was the gala collaboration dinner by Zaiyu Hasegawa (Jimbocho Den) and Hiroyasu Kawate (Florilege), held at the former to mark the latter’s 4th anniversary.

 

 

Abroad, I was absolutely blown away by my (belated) first-ever visit to Noma.

 

 

But in absolute terms, nothing prepared me for the sheer brilliance of Oslo’s undersung gem, Maaemo. Esben Holmboe Bang’s cuisine is superlative; while Pontus Dahlstrom ensures everything front-of-house runs like Nordic clockwork. Meal of the year for me.

 

 

 

• Chefs and Restaurants to Watch in 2014

2013 was the breakout year for Jimbocho Den. In 2014, expect the mainstream to start catching up and lionizing this innovative restaurant and its irrepressible chef, Zaiyu Hasegawa.

Chef Hasegawa was one of those I tipped for big things in the 2012 Eater survey. 

 

And watch the reborn L’Osier pick up plaudits, gongs and stars (it formerly had three), under its new head chef, Gagnaire alumnus Olivier Chaignon.

Recognized by UNESCO: the stars of washoku

 

So it's official: washoku is now a very tangible, edible, delectable UNESCO Intangible World Heritage — just as I previewed in my Food Matters piece in the Japan Times last Friday [Quality rises above the menu scandals].

Hopefully this will lead to a massive surge in interest — and justifiable pride — in Japan's traditional cuisine, not only at the highest levels of kaiseki but all the way down to the daily shokuji meals served up in ordinary restaurants and people's homes.

So where to go in Tokyo to taste washoku at its very finest? In terms of depth of flavor, quality ingredients and gorgeous presentation, you could not do better than to book yourself into Kojyu. 

That was where the photo that accompanied my JT piece was taken. And that is good enough reason for me to revisit the superb meal we had there earlier this year. The images (and their captions) speak for themselves… 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Caveats and comparisons:

When Chef Okuda moved Kojyu out of the old premises last year and into the same building as his second restaurant (Ginza Okuda), it was a move up in the world in every sense: up to the 4th floor — in the old location it was on the ground floor — and into slicker, sleeker premises. That's just the kind of atmosphere that the well-endowed (I mean moneywise, of course) Ginza crowd like.

Whether or not that is your thing, Okuda's cuisine remains outstanding, technically faultless and breathlessly refined. However, a few words of caution for anyone who is not used to breathing the rarefied air at that altitude of high-end kaiseki — and to rubbing elbows (though only metaphorically at that plush, spacious counter) with the kind of people who inhabit those stratas: My advice would be to instead start with the excellent and rather more approachable Ginza Okuda. 

 

And here's the man himself, Chef Okuda, behind the scenes in his kitchen — and yes, that was me alongside him...

 

For more top writing about the UNESCO heritage listing and its impact, check out Matt Goulding's recent piece in Roads & Kingdoms.

The 2014 Michelin Guide to Tokyo/Yokohama/Shonan was announced on Tuesday and the book itself went on sale today (Friday Dec.6). Kojyu, as expected, has retained its three-star status.

Jimbocho Den: expect the unexpected

Arriving at Den, you step through that carefully illuminated entrance, away from the back streets of Jimbocho. It looks serious and imposing, as discreet and refined as a high-end kaiseki restaurant in Kagurazaka.

 

The greeting is formal, the interior precise and proper. Whether you're sitting at the counter or in one of the upstairs rooms, everything is just as it should be in Japan. 

    

 

That is, until the first course is served. Most likely it will be a monaka wafer stuffed with rich foie gras, accompanied by a glass of Franciacorta Berlucchi '61 Brut... This is not what you expect – for a lot of different reasons:

a) monaka is a dessert, a light wafter casing that is usually filled with an (sweet azuki bean paste). b) foie gras is most definitely not part of the Japanese tradition. c) bubbly? 

  

 

And d) it's not just foie gras inside that monaka: there's a fruit jam, prepared from semi-dried kaki persimmons. There's also a slightly salty crunch, which could be fine-cut shoyu-zuke cucumber pickles.

 

More recently, though, Chef Hasegawa has been chopping up iburigakko, those distinctively smoky-flavoured daikon pickles that are a speciality of Akita.

It's a stroke of left-field inventiveness. And this is just the first course of many in a meal that unfolds with a series of unothodoxies, visual puns, witticisms and even conjuring tricks.

As I write in my Japan Times review... Whether it’s your first visit or your 30th, there is only one way to approach it: expect the unexpected.

 

 

In a previous post I introduced the Dentucky Fried Chicken...

 

Over the next few days, I'll be dropping a few more photos of other inventive dishes by Chef Zaiyu Hasegawa. 

 

Here's the full info box, complete with address and opening times:

 

Den

2-2-32 Kanda-Jimbocho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

(03) 3222-3978

http://www.jimbochoden.com/en/

• Open: 5-11:30 p.m.; Sat.5-10:30 p.m.; closed Sun. & hols.

• Nearest subway: Jimbocho (Hanzomon, Shinjuku & Mita lines).

• What works: Contemporary Japanese cuisine with brilliant style and humor.

• What doesn't: In the upstairs rooms you miss much of the magic.

• Smoking: Not permitted.

• Set courses at ¥9,500 & ¥12,000. Major credit cards accepted.

• No menu; some English spoken.