Kaiseki Ryouri (会席料理）

Some meals are special. There is a lot of delicious food out there that fit in countless categories. I've eaten many many good things but there are a few meals that stand out. There was a meal I ate in Rome off Piazza Novona that I won't forget. The night I ate at Morimoto's in NYC was another one. Kaiseki Ryouri in Atami falls into that category. It embodied all that I've learned about Japanese cuisine so far. This is one of note and I hope there are many more ahead.

So a little background about Kaiseki...It is a very traditional and elegant way of Japanese cooking and eating. A variety (typically 7 or more) small courses are prepared and presented one by one. Fresh, local, seasonal ingredients are used. Preparation varies from course to course. There are grilled items, steamed items, stewed items, raw items, warm, cold, hot, all presented to look beautiful and give the eater a variety of tastes and textures so their palate doesn't get stale eating a big plate of the same thing. Dishes are typically decorated to resemble nature. So we begin.

First course: Kabocha (Pumpkin/Butternut Squash-type) chawanmushi.
Chawanmushi is a steamed egg custard. It's not a solid custard because it has some other kind of liquid with it. The regular version just has dashi broth and eggs, so it tends to run after you start eating it. This one was squashed based and probably just had egg yolks so it was sweet and rich. The liquid did not separate as easily which was a bit nicer. On top is a sweet Chinese fruit and there were also pieces of squash in the bottom of the dish. This was an appetizer in every sense of the world. Just big enough to get an appetite going for the next dish ahead...

Second course: Sashimi, 3 ways. From here on, all the courses came with keigo-laced instructions and descriptions from the server. After picking out the nouns and verbs from "Would you please allow me to introduce to you...I think" mess that is keigo, I figured this out...

3 types of sashimi here: Maguro (lean tuna) Hamachi (Yellowtail tuna) Agi (under the carrot, small fish) Flavors incredibly clean and fresh. I wish there was some more contrast presented in types of fish, the one fault in the whole meal. The Aji contrasted but the Hamachi and Maguro were much to similar to eachother...lean meat from the tuna family. The Agi was a bit different and sprinkled with some green onion. I enjoyed that one alot. Also look at the flowers and leaves carved from vegetables, totally edible.

Also on the sashimi plate was this salad of white tuna wrapped around a thin slice of cucumber. We were actually instructed to eat this first. Then finish with the Above sashimi.This one was interesting, the second sashimi portion on the palte. It was a cooked shrimp in two halves in a connsome and fish egg jelly. The bottom of the cup was filled with a type of white soy product. Not firm like tofu, not a jelly, a bit more stretchy than a pudding. The tail half of the shrimp was shrimp, but the carpace portion, legs, head, and all were deep fried and lightly sweetened by the bath it was sitting in. It was cruncy, briny, and sweet at the same time.

Clockwise from top is Aji, Hamachi, Maguro
Clockwise from top: Gaijin, sashimi plate, beer, chopsticks. Where's waldo?

Third Course: Soup (not miso) Citrus flavored broth. The Japanese use lemon or yuzu rind often in soup that is not miso based. Soup is a major part of Japanese cusine and is eaten with all dinners, sometimes twice as in this case. White miso is the staple accompanyment with the maincourse. This is a course on its own. In the soup was a piece of Tamago-dofu, tofu made with an egg base, a Japanese bitter green, and chicken meatball. The soup was citrusy and salty but balanced. It seemed like the chicken meatball was cooked by steam right in the bowl. These bowls come covered and the guest opens it up. Not sure if its just to keep it warm or the actual preparation. Course four: This is Aji, a very local ingredient. It was just salted and grilled, served with lemon. Fish was not served right off the grill, it cooled a bit before it was served. It's a white, slightly oily, not that flaky fish. Much more interesting than flounder, we took this one apart ourselves. We were also reminded that the best meat is the cheeks and inside the head. I don't disagree. This was the oiliest, most tender part.


Course five: Nimono (stewed preparation) This was like a mini sukiyaki, no meat. Inside the pot were hoshimeiji mushrooms , green onions, and cabbage. You remove the veggies and dunk them in the soy sauce, chive, spiced daikon mixture at right. Out of all the courses, this was the least delicous, but still the best sukiyaki I've had. Vegetables were tender and the broth was flavored with dashi and a bit of soy sauce and sake.
Sixth (and best) Seafood stewed/grilled course. Three small portions. This one, a conch concoction, was grilled in its own shell. The base had rocks and a sterno and was flaming when it was brought to the table. The top was capped when it came out and we were instructed to leave it for a bit. It was worth the wait. It tasted like the ocean. Inside were pieces of tender conch, a piece of mushroom (shiitake) and some greens. The broth picked up the flavor of the ocean, salty and slightly mineral. After scouring out all the pieces I drank every last drop. There was also a little esgargot inside along with the bigger pieces of conch. Completely different flavor, first time I had anything like it.
Yaki-enoki. Grilled mushrooms with some of the same bitter green. Grilled mushrooms are always excellent. They tasted like steak they were so well cooked.
Here is the set of three of the grilled items. The conch still has the cap on when I took this one. The long plate has a piece of grilled fish called カレー。Don't know the name in English. It was just an accompanyment to the first two. This grilled fish was served chilled in a ponzu sauce.
７: A grilled (at the table) set. This is a metal plate with a big sterno underneath and some type of leaf. On top of the leaf are mushrooms, tofu, rice, thin slices of beef, and a miso mixture. This was all cooked together for a few minutes on the plate, then we mixed it all and ate it from a separate plate. Whatever was in the miso mixture was some of the best seasoning I've ever tasted. The beef was not overwealmingly marbled so it actually suited my American tastes a little better. As opposed to the 6th plate, this was very much a land course. Rice, mushrooms, beef, soy.

Shiro Miso soup. A must with every main course, Japanese custom. This one was very elegant for miso soup. The white object was a very light soy biscut. Iniside the soup were green onions and a type of stringy green seaweed.
Tsukemono with the main plate.
Dessert was a mango cream (more like a blended fruit compote) and fresh fruit. This was chilled, very simple. The mango cream tasted like mangos, not cream or butterfat so after a pretty long dinner went down easily and didn't leave me feeling like I had to go for a jog. This was really a fresh fruit dessert in disguise. Just to show how good the chef was in planning the meal, take a look at the color of the mango cream and the red fruit on top. Same design and texture as the first course. I really liked that.

This was so Japanese and wonderful. Everything was fresh and clean. Nothing was overly seasoned, sweeted salty, greasy, fried, all of the things that make food taste good. It was a clean delicious. Balanced. Looking at the food was almost as satisfying as eating it. There was a range of textures and temperatures so that you could look forward to each course. American/French high cuisine could learn something from this. Cream, foie gras, caviar is not needed to hit the top of the food world.