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Chilled green tea and chicken (Mt. Fuji ice-drawn dashi, green tea, Suruga shamo chicken soup, avocado jade, eggplant wrap)

Thinking afresh about dashi in Japanese cuisine, I realized it's created through the synergy between glutamic acid and inosinic acid, the umami…

• Serves 10 · ¥350

• Cook time 30 min

Jade-simmered eggplant with beef jibu-ni, topped with an aromatic sesame sauce

For the eggplant, we poke a hole through the center of the flesh with chopsticks so the oil can reach all the way through, and cook it while turning…

Keiju egg mousse, sea urchin, shrimp with savory dashi sauce and wasabi

This is a signature dish of sorts at our restaurant, served year-round and well received by guests. The eggs we use are called Keiju-tamago, produced…

• Serves 20 · ¥580

• Cook time 30 min

Kohaku-dori chicken liver mousse monaka, vinegar-cured mackerel with wild raspberry vinegar jelly, duck marinated in dashi soy sauce with orange flavor, black pork tsukune, chilled tomato takiawase, asparagus and garland chrysanthemum greens ohitashi

I've put together an assortment of drinking dishes that pair with anything — wine, shochu, or sake. Among them, the kohaku-dori liver mousse monaka…

• Serves 1 · ¥100

• Cook time 2 hr

Shijimi Clam Chawanmushi, Cauliflower Surinagashi

This appetizer is a dish we also served during our pre-opening. The image is of something like a 'Japanese-style clam chowder.' The potato added to…

• Serves 1 · ¥200

• Cook time 1 hr

Simmered conger eel — burdock purée, green asparagus

Wanting to bring some Japanese character into the burdock purée, I added not just onion but also long green onion as an ingredient. I add fresh cream…

Cauliflower Mousse, "When Spring Begins to Scent the Air"

This appetizer (sakizuke) spotlights cauliflower, an ingredient at the end of its winter season. The cauliflower mousse is meant to convey a sense of…

• Serves 10 · ¥320

• Cook time 1 hr

"Shifting vegetables" parfait — burdock cracker, snap pea, green peas, fava bean, butterbur sprout, fiddlehead fern, micro tomato, kabocha squash, potato

This dish had its start about five years ago, when I served a meal at a nursing home. Seeing how happily the residents ate it, I thought about how I…

Potato, Octopus, and Kabocha Squash, Tender-Simmered Live Octopus

"Drawing out the appeal of Hokkaido's overwintered vegetables." The overwintered vegetables used here are Niseko 540 potato and Dark Horse kabocha…

• Serves 1 · ¥620

• Cook time 2 hr

Shrimp, pumpkin, fu, and green beans in tofu dressing

This is about pumpkin (kabocha). Looking into the literature, there are fairly well-established temperatures and times at which pectin sets, and…

• Serves 1 · ¥600

• Cook time 1 hr

Salmon tawara-style deep-fried, grilled-eggplant batter, chrysanthemum achara pickle

In the tawara-age, besides onion and long onion, I also add taro, and this makes it come through much more clearly as Japanese cuisine. The sticky…

Grilled eel roll, local mochibuta pork and bamboo shoot grilled with sansho pepper miso, new-harvest sweet potato in salted honey, azuki bean cream cheese terrine, sweetfish Hakata-style pressed sushi, mountain stream crab fried and marinated in vinegar, green plum in a crystal-clear kuzu-starch glaze, and blanched taro stem with salted fish-innard paste

As for the local Mochibuta pork and bamboo shoot grilled with sansho miso: our local Mochibuta pigs are raised on feed blended with a high proportion…

Pumpkin and Seafood Japanese-Style Stew

Even a veteran master chef can encounter dishes whose cooking method is impossible to grasp just by hearing about it or seeing it once. This Pro's…

Corn Mineoka Tofu with Charcoal-Scented Sauce

Wrap the corn in plastic wrap while still in the husk, steam it for about 20 minutes, and once it's cooled enough to handle, clean it and separate…

• Serves 1 · ¥150

• Cook time 40 min

Suzuki Sea Bass Oil-Marinated, Abalone Slow-Cooked in Oil

Wanting to make a cool, summer-appropriate dish, and since sweetfish is the famous summer fish known for its pairing with smartweed, I decided to…

• Serves 2 · ¥1,400

• Cook time 3 hr

Winter melon steamed parcel, summer bracken rolled in fried tofu skin, tender-simmered beef tongue, lotus root dumpling, summer vegetable deep-fried tofu fritter

This is the lidded-dish course. For the summer warabi shinoda-maki, the warabi is first treated as usual to remove its bitterness and simmered to…

Corn Minegaoka tofu with charcoal-scented thick sauce

I wrap the corn, still in its husk, in plastic wrap and steam it for about 20 minutes in a steamer; once the residual heat has released, I clean it…

• Serves 1 · ¥150

• Cook time 40 min

Autumn brocade platter: kogarashi-yose, smoked autumn duck, oil-simmered roe-bearing ayu, and pike conger and matsutake ōharagi-age

A repeat-visit dish aimed at guests in their 20s and 30s. Why it resonates: a large shared platter that makes people want to take a photo. I designed…

• Serves 1 · ¥180

• Cook time 20 min

Autumn-leaf assortment: oyster and persimmon miso gratin, shrimp and water caltrop grilled with yuzu, scallop autumn-color pickle, small clam adductor in apple vinegar, shuto cheese, persimmon and salmon, rolled dried persimmon, matcha red bean paste with skin-on chestnut

As a reconception of dishes favored in Tokyo and Niigata cuisine, this evokes a late-autumn medley. We designed each dish with an eye to color…

• Serves 1 · ¥2,475

• Cook time 1 hr

Three-Fruit Jelly Terrine

Because the fruit is arranged in two layers, we pour the jelly base in five to six separate stages. If each layer isn't poured before the surface has…

Edamame Surinagashi

This chilled pureed soup uses summer edamame, its dashi base rounded out with consommé, milk, and fresh cream. The threeline grunt is salted, dusted…

• ¥420

• Cook time 30 min

Round eggplant oil-steamed with burnt sesame-soy sauce

The origin of Japanese cuisine lies in enjoying the aroma and taste of ingredients and the passing of the seasons. However, as diversification of…

• Serves 5 · ¥980

• Cook time 30 min

Milt gratin in a yellow yuzu shell, finished with Saikyo miso

Cleaning pufferfish milt is done carefully, to remove any fishy smell. How it's handled changes the mouthfeel, so it's a step that requires real…

Bamboo shoot miso-glazed and grilled three ways -- sansho-leaf miso, dengaku miso, and yuzu miso, cornetfish and celtuce stem dressed with fish roe, icefish sushi wrapped in a cherry leaf, baby turban shell coated with sea urchin, foie gras in an amber jelly, salmon rolled in a brocade pattern

The grilled hassun course is bamboo shoot dengaku, three ways. The bamboo shoot is rehydrated with rice bran and dried chili, then peeled, cleaned…

• ¥1,340

• Cook time 40 min