tokyo food file

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.

green by name and nature, down in Ishikawacho

'charcoal grill & bar green' (the sign is defiantly lower-case) got a plug in my column last Friday; and before that I posted about their unusual char-grilled wakame. Here are a few more pics...

If the blackboard with the food menu doesn't tempt you in...

...then the drinks menu should do the trick, with three craft beers on tap and a range of California wine.

The heart of the restaurant is the grill — and  chef Jason, who I believe hails from Scotland.

These are his tortilla rolls with cajun grilled chicken...

And the grilled duck with mashed potato was great.

It's a fine little place, probably the only one worth knowing about at that end of Ishikawacho Station (at the other end you have Chinatown, of course) — and better than anywhere you'd find on dismal Motomachi...

Here's a link to their site...

And here's the map link...

Baird Brewing brings bayside barbecue and beer — a few more pics

The excellent new Bashamichi Taproom is featured in my column which went up in The Japan Times today.

I've already posted my pics from the opening day. Now here are a few more taken during subsequent visits [along with text that we had to cut due to space constraints in the paper]. All in all, some of the tastiest, most pleasurable "research" I've done in a while...

 

"This new Taproom occupies the whole of a freestanding, three-story building.  Built 40 years ago (it was formerly a Mainichi Shimbun distribution point, as you can still see on Google Maps Street View), the handsome premises have a warmth and character all their own."

 

One of those Fat Boy ribs.... "Sourced locally in Japan (the regular ribs are from US hogs) it's a massive bone, like a miniature monolith on your plate, and a lot richer and fattier. If you’ve never tasted the real-deal US BBQ before, be prepared to be amazed. If you have, well you should have no complaints."

 

The regular ribs (below): "Wonderful. The glaze is rich, shiny, almost caramelized, and the meat underneath has a lovely smoked quality, with a great chewy texture that makes you want to gnaw all the way down, leaving the bone bare." These, below, with side servings of smoky-savoury Texas beans and slaw.

 

"[Chuck] also prepares all his own BBQ sauces. There are usually three or four on the go, including rich Texas, just perfect with that brisket; tangy South Carolina Mustard, a good match with the pork; a spicy North Carolina chili-cider vinegar mix, that goes great with pulled pork; and Kansas City-style sweet-savory Red, the very same sauce that gets slathered on the ribs and chicken."

 

I've got to give that vinegar sauce another plug. As I said, it's the perfect accompaniment to Chuck's pulled pork shoulder — should you be lucky enough to be around when he's prepared a batch...

 

We also had to try the BBQ pizza. There's a non-carnivore cheese version too — but really, vegetarians are going to feel as out of place here as teetotallers would.

 

Which brings us to the other reason for a visit to the Taproom: the remarkable range of beers. Maybe it's the BBQ aromas wafting through the air, but somehow the Baird brews taste even better here than at the other Tokyo taprooms.

 

This really is "beer with conviction" [And if you drive after quaffing a few of these, it'll be you who gets the conviction too].

 

In a new departure from the previously all-in-house-brewed Taproom policy, three of those taps have been given over to imported guest beers.

 

I like the little details too: how about this custom-made grille over the ground-floor window. You know what the initials stand for?

 

Only one possibly answer: B there. Or B square.

The Bashamichi Taproom — BBQ and Baird beer at its best

The lines were already winding around the room to the door within an hour of the Bashamichi Taproom opening its doors today. It's a handsome building, three stories high with a nicely curving counter on the ground floor...

 

A comfortable 2nd-floor lounge...

And up on the 3rd floor, a small terrace that's going to be just great in the summer.

 

There's even a little VIP room to one side — not that they'd let the hard-core boozers in there.

 

The beer is (of course) the big draw. Just look at all those taps.

 

Only one hand pump at present, dispensing the very quaffable Bashamichi Ale.

 

But we weren't only there for the beer. It's the barbecue that makes the Bashamichi Taproom special. This is the sampler plate: some beef, some pork and some chicken...

 

And this the beef brisket...

 

Three home-made sauces — Texas, Red, and Mustard.

 

And here's the man responsible for all this fine food, the Pitmaster himself, Chuck.

 

You'll find the Bashamichi Taproom blog here...

And here's a map link...

happy new beer — celebrating 10 years of Baird beers

Yes, a good few pints were sunk yesterday on the first day of the Baird Beer 10th anniversary celebrations at the Fishmarket Taproom in Numazu.

Wait a minute, didn't we celebrate the 10th anniversary back in the summer? Indeed we did, but that was held to mark Bryan and Sayuri's actual opening of the Taproom. This latest excuse for us to make the trip down the coast was to celebrate 10 years of Baird Brewing (their license took longer to come through, it seems).

There was a great crowd, both locals and folks like us from further afield. And there were — of course — some lovely beers to mark the occasion.

Our two favorites — based on the number of times we went back for more — were the commemorative Ten Ale, an Imperial red ale (on the right below); and the rich, cask-conditioned (for 6 months) Berry Big Brown Ale, which was beautifully complex, only hinting at all the strawberries that went into it last summer. (that's the brew in the goblets, below and also above).

What else was there? Two Baird standbys — Fisherman’s Wheat Ale (the handsome pint on the left in the top photo); and Kurofune Porter — but both of them brewed to the original recipes — and both were very fine, I thought. Plus the excellent Hatsujozo 2011 Imperial Pale Lager (ABV 7.3%).

And there was some great pub grub, including the Marinaded Octopus (top) and chuka-fu deep-fried eggplant with a very tasty meaty miso sauce on the side (below).

Bryan led a brewery tour which was eye-opening for those of us who remember the original brewing room, little more than a closet, down underneath the Taproom.

  

Obviously this was a time to pause, look back and celebrate. But there's plenty to look forward to as well for Bryan and Sayuri — and the rest of us. 

Later this month, the newest Taproom will be opening in Yokohama. More will be revealed very soon, so stay tuned!