Japan 2012 - Kaiseki Dinner at Ôgami

Kyoto is - amongst many other things - famous for its Kaiseki dinners, a traditional Japanese "Set Menu", consisting of a decent number of small dishes served consecutively, all prepared to the highest standards with regards to presentation, quality and freshness. I have been longing to try one of these dinners and while my original idea to enjoy such a dinner in the Ryokan I was staying in did not come to fruition (I think I needed to book a Ryokan in the $400 plus category to be offered that pleasure - that would be excluding the food), the front desk staff member of Ryokan Sakura, a young man with rather good English language skills, booked me into a small restaurant in Gion and enabled a fantastic culinary experience. The young man did not only make the booking for me and briefed the taxi driver by means of a Google Maps printout, but he apparently also instructed the staff at the restaurant about my lack of Japanese language skills - the chef and his apprentice were going out of there way to make me feel comfortable and to explain the food they presented, despite their very basic English language skills. At times, they would even consult an online dictionary to translate the odd word! But not to worry, with my basic Japanese (90% of which consists of food and drink related vocabulary, purely coincidentally of course), their basic English, lots of gestures, smiles (as we were progressing from dish to dish, probably more like an amazed, delirious grin in my case) and bows we managed to communicate well enough. The food was just as good as any of the food I had in the top restaurants I visited in other parts of the world, the presentation was absolutely stunning, the flavours spanning the whole rainbow of sensory colours you can imagine, the quality of the products flawless, the mixture of textures exciting and sometimes surprising... I could go on and on, let's just say that it was as good as it gets. I ordered two very nice Junmai Nihonshu flasks (served in an ice water bowl - excellent!) with the dinner, which were charged at 4,400 Yen, and the food should have been charged at 11,500 Yen, but for some reason I got a discount and only paid 14,000 Yen in total, which is an absolute bargain. The sensei presented me with a bill of 4,400 Yen to begin with and only if I protested vehemently (by pushing 20,000 Yen towards the chef, who only wanted to take one note of 10,000 of me) did his apprentice spot the mistake and pointed it out to his master. If you are looking for a Kaiseki experience where you sit on the floor on tatami mats, and perhaps get some touristy Geisha show thrown in for good measure, this is not the place to go - the restaurant consists of a long bar with perhaps 10-12 chairs at it, and the kitchen right behind the bar with the chef, his apprentice and a dish washer / helper preparing the food right in front of your eyes. The sensei was constantly apologising for his lack of English, and I was constantly apologising for my lack of Japanese and yet I like to believe that thanks to my exaggerated (and yet genuine!) gestures of appreciation of his art, we established an understanding. I just felt so sorry for the small team of three since I was the only guest on that evening, and yet one they couldn't properly gauge with whether he was just stuffing his face or actually rate their work. They also managed to cook up quite a generous portion of rice (flavoured with anago, sea eel - absolutely delicious, especially due to the brownish crust that had built at the bottom of the clay pot) and the chef and I agreed that it would be too much to polish this all off (him by sticking out his non-existent belly and patting it, me by patting my already properly stuffed gut), so they offered a take-away - two neatly wrapped up leafs, containing snack size packages of fragrant rice!

The place isn't easy to find, there is no sign in Latin letters anywhere, and if you are peculiar about your food and need to know what you are eating (and don't speak Japanese), you might be in a bit of trouble. On the other hand, if you like to be a bit outside of your comfort zone, enjoy different foods and have a bit of a sense for adventure, go for it! Oh yes, and if you're of the non-meat eating kind (Martin G., pay attention now!), this is perfect - lots of fish, tofu and veggies, no meat. None at all.

I have included pictures of the different dishes that were served on the evening, as well as a picture of the front (the entrance is on the left, next to the elevator door - no idea what's in the back on the right, but they showed me where to go!) and a picture of the business card (all in Kanji, but print it and a taxi driver can take you there). Please write a comment of you also went there and let me know about your experience (great likelihood with the constant readership of 2 people or so this blog enjoys...)!




Pic #1 - Right: White fish on plum sauce with young ginger and fresh wasabi. Left: Sweet corn porridge (for lack of a better word) with some quite umami (delicious) gelatinous stuff hidden beneath, topped with an ebi (prawn).




Pic #2 - Right: Cucumber purée with some white stuff (grated Yam, I imagine), and some bits and bobs (notice that most of the first few dishes come with freshly grated wasabi - wonderful). I had instructions to stir it all up (I am normally good at that anyway) and then spoon my way to the bottom - which I happily did! Left: A jelly (again quite umami, not unlike the sauce you get with Agedashi Nasu for example) with some bits of tako (octopus) in it, and some other very tasty yellow bits which I have no idea what they were - some fruit / seed / veggie I guess?




Pic #3 - Nihonshu, the way it should be served!




Pic #4 - Sashimi of tai (translated as Red Snapper by the apprentice, after he had consulted the Internet) and o-toro (outstanding melt-in-your-mouth fat tuna belly - best I ever had, and I had my fair share!)








Pic #5 and 6 - A clear soup (wonderfully flavoured, rich and aromatic - the chef gave the apprentice quite a bollocking since he didn't get it right, and then fixed it by cranking up the gas flame that I thought whatever was in that pot must be nearing nuclear fusion) with white fish (not unlike suzuki), a shiitake mushroom, Japanese chives, some clear gelatinous strip with a bit of red spicy sauce on it (to keep it separate from the soup, I imagine) and the best tofu I ever had in my life (you can imagine by now that I had my fair share of that, too). The dish, in all its simplicity, a work of genius! And look at the presentation, too - of course they would make sure that the lid would align perfectly with the bowl!




Pic #7 - Translated by the staff again as "Sweet Fish" (as they presented the two little buggers to me swimming alive in a wooden bucket full of water, minutes before they were skewered and put over a bed of hot charcoals) with some fresh green herb-based sauce and some white yam-purée like stuff (bottom dish), and a tomato mayonnaise (it was not really mayonnaise but had a by similar consistency) topped with a fried soft-shell crab - great contrast of crispness and soft textures in both dishes! The chef made sure to let me know not to eat that branch of leaves served with the fish, by the way - very caring!








Pic #8 and 9 - Language issues not withstanding, I interpret this dish to be titled "Variations on Edamame". The presentation blew me away (they prepared the dish behind the counter, withdrawn from my always closely observing eyes) and as the simple edamame (the soy been pod in front left, leaning on the little leaf-wrapped package) with its slightly rough shell has some flavoursome and nutritious soy beans inside, so did all the other bits on the plate, uhm in the basket, have something rather delicious inside their shell - the ceramic pod on top had some horenso (spinach), pumpkin and some fish I can't properly remember now (sensory overload, I guess) in it, the blossom (I guess that's what it was?) on the right hosted a piece of tako, and two bits of veggie and the bag, as you can see in the second picture, had a piece of sushi in it that is typical for the region, cured saba (mackerel) on rice, often wrapped in a persimmon leave - surprisingly durable due to the cured fish and vinegary rice.




Pic #10 - Pieces of hamo (pike conger) in a thin soup with tofu and vegetables - wonderfully flavoured broth (again), tender bits of fish, fresh lime squeezed directly into the pot, giving the soup a zesty tang to it, and a fully flavoured sauce to dip the fish and tofu into. Absolutely lovely.




Pic #11 - Kani (crab - of a rather hairy kind!) with a nice umami jelly to the right (I was scraping the loose bits of kani into this jelly - no idea whether that was the idea, but it worked for me) and another purée like dish, topped with a white snow fungus (which I ate before at Hakkasan in a sweet soup with Nashi pears!!). I was in culinary Nirvana by now.




Pic #12 - Finally - the rice! I was asked somewhere between pictures 6 and 7 (I think) how I wanted my rice, with tako, anago (sea eel), kai (mussels), or something not fishy at all that I forgot now, and I went for anago. Good choice! The rice was cooked in a clay pot on a gas flame and the nice brown crust you can see is the pinnacle of rice cooking (in my book anyway!) The anago lent the dish a nice earthy, sweetish flavour. The oshinko mori-awase (mixed pickles) were greatly varied and of a perfect crispy texture and the miso-shiro was - sorry to say it again - the best (at a margin!!) I ever tasted, it had an unusual fresh, almost citrusy twist to it.




Pic #13 - As if that wasn't enough, they finished me off with a dessert of mango and coconut sorbet and a pineapple jelly (hiding behind the mango sorbet in the picture). Good, but with desserts not really featuring heavily in the Japanese cuisine, not at the same amazing standard of previous dishes.








Pic #14 and 15 - Said business card.


Pic #16 - Look for this place!