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Kodaiji Wakuden

Posted by Michiyo Nakamoto

It takes some nerve to start a restaurant business in Kyoto, particularly if you are an outsider. As home to Japan’s imperial court and nobility for over 1,200 years, Kyoto is also the birthplace of Kyo-kaiseki, an elaborate, multi-course meal widely considered the pinnacle of Japanese haute cuisine. What’s more, the people of Kyoto who see themselves as the ultimate arbiters of culinary sophistication, are notoriously dismissive of those who hail from anywhere else. So, it must have been a… Read more »

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Kafuka – Innovative Japanese Cuisine

Posted by Michiyo Nakamoto

  Tokyo has no shortage of high quality Japanese restaurants but rather inconveniently, most of them only offer full-course menus, complete with dessert. The problem with set courses, though, is not just that some of us, myself included, end up eating much more than we would like to. Because portions tend to be of identical size in any professional restaurant, regardless of whether the guest is a big or small eater, this practically guarantees that some food will be wasted…. Read more »

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Restaurant Feu

Posted by Michiyo Nakamoto

Once past the bustling commercial complex that is Tokyo Midtown and the imposing National Art Center on a side street to the left, there is little to entice pedestrian traffic down Gaien Higashi-dori, the street that connects Roppongi to Aoyama. Gallery Ma in the Toto building, which holds interesting exhibits strictly for the initiated – such as a show that was on this summer of architect Kenzo Tange’s photographs of his work in progress – and the bookstore just below… Read more »

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Crab

Posted by Michiyo Nakamoto

There are certain things any self-respecting foodie in Japan needs to eat when in season – bamboo shoot in the spring, hamo (daggertooth pike conger) in the summer, matsutake (pine mushroom) in the autumn, and in the winter it would have to be crab. Although I do not consider myself a fanatical foodie, I had the good fortune this winter to be served specimens of some of the highest-grade crab in Japan, not once, but twice. The first crab came… Read more »