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Oyster Tofu

For the fried course's oyster tofu mousse style, it's served with a dipping sauce made by thickening white soba broth with kuzu starch and stirring…

Simmered namasu

Ni-namasu is a Kyoto obanzai (everyday home-style) dish, and a New Year's dish. It has a crisp, crunchy texture, and since it's prepared with…

Scorpionfish Wrapped in White Kuzu with Its Own Liver

The soup-course dish is scorpionfish (okoze) wrapped in white kuzu with its own liver. Scorpionfish just before its summer spawning is spoken of in…

Sea Bream Steamed with Sake

Small bowl: snow peas and new burdock, tofu-dressed

Sakura-chaya was founded in Showa 8 — 1933 — and is the third-oldest established ryotei, a traditional Japanese restaurant, in Mukojima, a district…

Persimmon shira-ae

(Looking back on the year with delicacies of the twelve zodiac animals, over a drink — all of it gentle on the body and low in calories.) We began…

Conger eel and summer vegetables with black vinegar glaze

This is the deep-fried course. For the anago and summer vegetables with black vinegar glaze, pouring the black vinegar glaze over them makes for a…

Pike conger eel dusted with kuzu starch

This is the simmered-soup course: hamo dusted with kuzu. I coat the pike conger eel thinly with kuzu starch and cook it through in kombu-infused hot…

Roe-bearing sweetfish rolled in thin sheet kombu; fern shoots wrapped in fried tofu skin

For the roe-bearing ayu rolled in shiraita kombu: the scales of the raw roe-bearing ayu are left on without scraping, and it is lightly skewered with…

Kombu dashi broth, egg tofu with salted sea cucumber intestines

For the konowata egg tofu, I use nikiri mirin, mirin with the alcohol boiled off. If alcohol gets into the egg, it loses its sheen. Using mirin that…

Larch-pattern tofu

Bamboo Shoot in Soy Milk Broth

Yuba-draped dressed dish

As for the hagoromo-ae in the chopstick-opening course: very delicious sashimi-grade yuba is now commercially available, so I keep the dressing…

Ayu uruka tofu

The appetizer ayu uruka tofu is served topped with tade-oroshi (grated water pepper) that has been given a sweet-and-sour balance with a little sweet…

Grilled uni saddle-draped tofu

Anglerfish, deep-fried and simmered

For the simmered course's deep-fried and simmered anglerfish, if I'm not serving it right away, simmering it ahead of time causes the potato-starch…

Catfish Hot Pot

This is a catfish hot pot. Scrub the catfish's skin with salt, fillet it into three pieces, and sear the skin side. Cut it on the bias into pieces…

Deep-Fried Pheasant Shinjo

This is the deep-fried course. For the pheasant shinjo, the already-cooked meat still clinging to the triangular bone left over from making stock is…

Ayu-Uruka Surinagashi

For the pureed soup of sweetfish and uruka — fermented sweetfish innards — we fillet sweetfish - a nagori, end-of-season ingredient - into three…

Light Kuzu-Thickened Broth

A stock is taken from white fish bones and crab, and it is finished as a light kuzu-thickened broth. Grated yuzu is sprinkled in as an aromatic…

Chicken Tenderloin, Late-Autumn Grilled; Red Cabbage and Lemon, Pressed Layers; Taro, Sesame-Salt Grilled; Kabocha in Its Own "Overcoat"; Corn in a Golden Coat; Chinese Yam with Tiny Pickled Plum Flavor; Tofu, Red Grape

For the kabocha in its own "overcoat": Western-style kabocha is cut into bite-sized pieces, steamed, and left to cool. Then the peel that was removed…

Carrot in Kuzu Glaze, Sashimi Konnyaku, Kneaded Sesame Tofu

Blended miso broth, grilled tofu, and Japanese mustard greens

Miso-based broth, Pacific saury fish dumplings, buckwheat dumpling, fried wheat gluten, taro, winter melon, daikon, carrot

From a craftsman's standpoint, nabe (hot pot) dishes are sometimes spoken of critically, along the lines of 'that's lazy work, beneath a professional…