A Few Good Reasons to Visit Japan

Also, the most wonderful way to start the day. The secret world of chicken. A delicious vintage menu. And a serious gift for grillers.

I’ve been trying to make a reservation at a ryokan in Kyoto, which is among the more frustrating experiences I’ve had. You can read the site in English, but the answer arrives in Japanese. I ask a friend to translate this missive, fill it out - and then receive yet another incomprehensible Japanese answer. Every few days a response arrives in English, but only to inform me that the room I want is no longer available and to choose another. This has been going on for weeks….

But this is, in fact, one of the reasons I go to Japan. In a world that has become maddeningly homogenized, for those of us not fluent in the language Japan remains a truly foreign experience. Each journey to Japan is an opportunity to experience an utterly unfamiliar culture, to be in a place where the past is always present while the future beckons in the most unexpected ways.

And that reminded me of a morning in Kyoto about ten years ago that was…. magical.

When I think about Kyoto, it's Hyotei I'll remember best. The 400 year old restaurant is famous for its kaiseki dinners, but we went early in the morning for asagayu, a stunningly perfect breakfast. Served in complete serenity, it's the most fitting way to begin a day in this city of temples. A moment not to be missed. 

The meal begins with a cup of warm, rosy ume tea. Such a welcoming flavor. Then this little still life appears, held out by women in kimono: two tiny, tasty fish, a perfect chestnut, one gorgeously boiled egg, its yolk halfway between solid and liquid, two pristine pieces of seaweed-wrapped sushi, and a little heap of pickled ginger.

Next a stack of ceramics arrives. Take them apart and you discover that each holds a different range of flavors. 

 Muzuku (seaweed from Okinawa), grated daikon, crabmeat.

Mibuna (a green with a faint mustard flavor), and shimeji mushrooms.

 Yuba (tofu skin), kinome (leaf of the prickly ash tree), and a mysterious substance that tasted to me like tofu laced with tiny roe. 

Then there is miso soup, a warm up to the main event. All this has just been a prelude to the most exquisitely cooked rice porridge.

This is subtle food. The rice is soft but entirely intact,  served with a thick, slightly sweet, slightly salty syrup that tasted to me like excellent soy sauce mixed with dashi. Sprinkled with pickled turnip and tiny fish, this food forces you to eat slowly, thoughtfully, with concentration. You look out at the garden, take another bite.  Sip some green tea

As we were leaving….

chef Yoshihiro Takahashi, the 15th-generation of his family to run Hyotei (which started as a tea house of the Nanzenji temple ) came out to feed the koi.

It makes me happy to think that when I return - next year or twenty years from now -Hyotei will still be there. Unchanged.

That is Atsushi Kono at his eponymous restaurant, Kono in New York’s Chinatown. It’s an elegant space where a few lucky people each evening are offered the opportunity to travel to Japan without boarding a plane.

There is much luxury and beauty here, like this crisp chicken skin served with caviar and a single kinome leaf. It’s delicious, but it’s kind of beside the point.

You are here to discover the secret world of chicken, to learn that a single chicken contains a hidden universe of textures and flavors you never dreamed existed. For those who think of chicken as divided into white and dark meat it is astonishing to discover that chickens have knees (delicious!) and tails, crowns, inner thighs, two flavors of wings and … best of all, aortas that resemble no chicken you have ever encountered.

This is hatsumoto - not just aorta but also all the other pipes that run into the heart. If you close your eyes and take a bite you simply cannot believe you are eating chicken. It tastes (and even looks), like the most delicious steak.

Yakitori at this level requires skill and knowledge. And time: it takes many chickens to make a single hatsumoto skewer.

The same is true of many of the skewers you will find at a classic yakitori-ya, and as you watch Chef Kono standing in the smoke and fire of the binchotan charcoal, madly fanning the flames as he does his triumphant cooking dance, you are being introduced to the essence of Japan.

This is not a Japanese menu, but rather a California menu that was greatly influenced by the cooking of Japan. It is from a dinner I had ten years ago at the extremely serene and always astonishing Benu in San Francisco.

These are my notes from the meal:

It might have been the company. We were happy together.

But when I found myself  closing my eyes on the very first bite so I could concentrate on the intricate tangle of tastes and textures in my mouth, I knew I was in for a wonderful journey. I sat, eyes shut, following the flavors as they slowly faded. When I opened them again I saw that he had also closed his eyes. 

I hadn’t expected this. The last meal I had at Benu, perhaps three years ago, was very nice, but it did not begin to prepare me for tonight. Walking in, through a calm garden into the spare elegance of the dining room, I was impressed by the voluptuous quiet. It is like entering a Japanese temple. I sat down and ran my hands across the dark wood of the table, appreciating its size, its distance from the other diners.  Benu offers, among other things, the luxury of privacy. You are aware that others are also dining here, but they do not intrude.

I sit in the hush of the room, enjoying the tactile pleasure of the flat black oval of wood that anchors my napkin. I pick up a glass, amazed at its fragility. Then that first bite, the potage. If it is possible to pack more intensity into a single spoonful, I have yet to experience it. 

I dip my spoon into this tiny bowl, scoop up the thousand year old quail egg with its funky, mysterious flavor, and encounter a jolt of ginger in the smoothness of the warm soup. 

Oyster, pork belly, kimchi. Astonishing! One minuscule mouthful that goes crackling into the mouth. A tiny oyster, slick and soft, is wrapped in a casing of dried pork belly and zapped with kimchi. The ingredients do a little tango in the mouth, dipping and swaying as the flavors leap across each other.  

Who know celery could be so sexy?  Add anchovy and peanuts, and you get crisp, crunch and salt in one tiny bite. 

A new texture. A change of flavor.  This trembling little spoonful, sunflower tofu, is all suave subtle smoothness. 

Another tiny but intense bite. The sliver of dried xo sausage is so thin you barely feel it in your mouth. But the flavor lasts, lingering like the final note of a flute whose sound you feel long after the music itself is gone.

On the menu this is called “salt and pepper squid.” On the plate it looks like a brooch you might pin to your dress.  In your mouth it is… astonishing.

Who would imagine wrapping a long prawn in jellyfish, and then embellishing it with caviar and horseradish?  It tastes even better than it sounds.

How to describe this? It looks innocuous, but it somersaults into your mouth, a medley of crisp textures. Is it mimicking shark fin soup? Perhaps. But this wild bamboo fungus has a texture I’ve never known before, and I find myself dipping my spoon in again and again, eager for one more taste. 

They call this “porridge,” so how could I have possibly imagined this little bit of poetry on the plate? Hidden inside is vivid orange sea urchin, the flavor as bright as the color.

 Pig head in its most elegant incarnation.

There is a kind of magic to ordinary Shanghai soup dumplings, their liquid filling wrapped inside pasta as thin as butterfly wings. But these, which hold lobster roe are especially joyful.

This small, shining golden sea bream, with its crown of lily bulbs and spring onions, is infused with the flavor of dried tangerine peels. It couldn’t possibly taste as lovely as it looks. But it does. 

Dried, aged abalone from 2008. It tastes like nothing else on earth. The flavor has a kind of sherry richness, the texture is both soft and resilient. Everything that’s come before has been building to this moment, preparing the palate for this stunning jolt of flavor.  It is the high point of the meal. 

Finally the meat portion of the menu: quail with olive, dandelion, mustard. Followed by beef braised in pear juice.  

And now dessert. First, sorbet in sake lees. Then this rather amazing yuba – tofu skin – with almond milk and white chocolate. Think burrata – and then think again. 

I haven’t even mentioned the bread, which was another astonishment: the crust crisp, the inside soft, served with a beautiful pentagon of butter drenched in the lightest honey.

Corey Lee and his kitchen are doing something remarkable at Benu, and they get wonderful support from the dining room staff.  Sommelier Yoon Ha’s pairings are quirky and brilliant; the wines and beers he selected acted like a chorus, humming softly behind each dish.

I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a meal this much.

Binchotan is the charcoal that yakitori-ya across Japan rely upon. But the lychee charcoal they use at Benu is even more special. I’ll let them explain it.

“After years of planning and refining, we are excited to be able to offer the same custom lychee charcoal that we use in our restaurants. 

This hardwood variety is meticulously produced by burning branches from farmed lychee trees over several days at low temperatures with minimal oxygen. This centuries-old process results in an artisanal charcoal that burns exceptionally clean and at the highest temperature.”

It is not inexpensive; it comes in 22 pound boxes at $8 a pound. But if grilling is your thing, you can’t do better.