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On an auspicious day (red sea bream flesh and fin)

From "expressing local heritage through cooking," this is the simmered course. Using the flesh and fin of red sea bream from Fukuoka, which boasts…

• Serves 1 · ¥1,100

• Cook time 50 min

Reishi sea snail fried in egg yolk batter, tomato deep-fried in white batter, stuffed hollow burdock

This is a fried course. For the Reishi sea snail fried in egg-yolk batter, I deep-fried the sea snail in a batter of rooibos tea, egg yolk, and…

• Serves 1 · ¥400

• Cook time 40 min

Omi beef, sea urchin, and bamboo shoot roll, grilled, topped with the aroma of sansho flower

The harmony of aromas conducted on the iron griddle is outstanding. Ōmi beef with just the right marbling, bamboo shoot wrapped in the flavor of…

Tilefish nanban-zuke and shrimp nanban-zuke with accordion-cut cucumber, freeze-dried tofu achara pickle, Fushimi pepper, and mixed scallion

This time, on 'vinegared dishes,' I learned from instructor Nakamura (Ryōtei Chiyoda). I take up 'nanban-zuke.'

Bamboo shoot 'tofu,' bamboo shoot simmered in miso, and sweet-savory simmered mallard duck

This is a dish that expresses local heritage. My workplace is an inn standing on the bank of the Tanigawa river, which flows down from Mount…

• Serves 1 · ¥320

• Cook time 1 hr

Chirashi Sushi

This time it's chirashi sushi, the fundamental rice course. For this sushi rice, I wanted a pronounced vinegar aroma, so I make the sushi vinegar…

• Serves 4 · ¥5,000

• Cook time 1 hr

Jellied deep-sea eelpout, whitefin trevally egg-yolk sushi, yellow sea bream pressed sushi, baby spear squid, sea sculpin, and salmon roe salad, goatfish fried and marinated in sweet vinegar, bracken fern shoots wrapped in a thin kombu sheet, and daikon radish dressed with bottarga

Under the theme of coping with rising food costs, I used trawl-caught fish from off Nadachi, Niigata. The wide variety of inexpensive fish caught by…

• Serves 1 · ¥432

• Cook time 2 hr

Hamaguri and Bamboo Shoot Takiawase

A stock taken from the hamaguri's fringe is combined with the soup used to simmer the bamboo shoot, and poured over at the finish. Hamaguri and…

• Serves 1 · ¥900

• Cook time 1 hr

Sushi, sushi, sushi, sushi — the incoming boat, the outgoing boat

As an innovation for the rice course, I devised this from chirashi-zushi. Between layers of sushi rice, I press in dry-roasted items — dry-scrambled…

• Serves 4 · ¥12,000

• Cook time 1 hr

Rice-flour and fava-bean manju wrapped in cherry leaf, topped with silver sauce, carrot, udo, wasabi, cherry leaf

When you lift the lid of the soup bowl, the spring fragrance of fava beans drifts up along with a gentle scent of cherry blossom, creating what I…

Kagoshima tea-leaf five-ingredient tofu dressing

This dish uses tea, one of Kagoshima Prefecture's proudest products — Kagoshima actually ranks first nationwide in tea output. Kagoshima tea is mild…

• Serves 3 · ¥300

• Cook time 30 min

Tempura (Rice with Soy-Marinated Ikura, Tai [Sea Bream] and Cherry-Blossom Dōmyōji-Mushi, Iburi-Gakko Potato Salad with Colorful Akita Vegetables, Snow Crab Tomo-Ae Kinuta-Maki, Aigamo Duck Skewer with Egg-Yolk Soy Sauce and Sansho)

For the tai and cherry-blossom dōmyōji-mushi, the dōmyōji rice flour is reconstituted in dashi and dyed cherry-blossom pink, making for a dish with…

Sea bream and aromatic vegetable hakusen-age, chia seed dressing

This time, on 'fried dishes,' I learned from chef Namai (Aoyama's 'Hana Michō'). This time I take up 'hakusen-age.'

Crab and sesame tofu with soft first-skimmed tofu skin, bush-warbler-green lily bulb, pumpkin and cheese terrine, Japanese halfbeak wrapped in coarse glutinous rice and sakura leaf, fava beans and whelk in plum-mist dressing

The toro-yuba in the crab and sesame tofu with toro-yuba is the soft portion that rises first when making yuba. For the lily bulb uguisu: combine…

Roasted Hakata Wagyu

What I look for in beef is that the meat itself has a firm sense of umami. For the roasted Hakata wagyu served this time, we used rump meat, cooking…

• Serves 2 · ¥1,500

• Cook time 3 hr

Jumbo Kuruma Prawn, Shark Fin

This is kuruma prawn tempura, but the jumbo kuruma prawn is served fried to about a half-cooked doneness, not quite fully cooked through, and I've…

• Cook time 10 min

Spring green dressed salad (iced kombu-dashi tea style)

As part of my effort to work around rising ingredient costs, this dish introduces something my staff and I devised together — during the aftermath of…

• Serves 1 · ¥500

• Cook time 1 hr

Spring baby sea bream grilled with a rapeseed-blossom glaze, fat greenling grilled with sansho leaf

I pictured the beautiful April season at the restaurant where I work in Chiba, with cherry blossoms and rapeseed flowers in full bloom, and expressed…

• Serves 1 · ¥1,000

• Cook time 1 hr

Kagoshima Fava Bean 'Croquette'

This dish is a piece of culinary development built around the rich ingredients Kagoshima Prefecture is known for. Fava beans are a Kagoshima…

• Serves 4 · ¥500

• Cook time 3 hr

Iwagaki Rock Oyster with Uni Dashi

As for the iwagaki rock oyster with uni (sea urchin) dashi, iwagaki have thick flesh, come in a range of sizes, and have a rich umami, making them an…

• ¥533

• Cook time 2 hr

Turnip and soft roe tofu

This is a clear-soup course using turnip as an end-of-season winter ingredient. Using both winter and spring ingredients, we aimed for a dish that…

• Serves 1 · ¥550

• Cook time 30 min

Napa cabbage simmered in its own puree

Napa cabbage tomoni from the 'vegetable work' at Yonemura in Shimbashi. We trim the napa cabbage down to just the core, then simmer it for fifteen to…

• Serves 2 · ¥100

• Cook time 1 hr

Wild Mountain Vegetable Sawani-Wan

You can enjoy two flavors in a single soup bowl. One is a flavor combining vegetables and asari clams. I roast butterbur sprouts and udo at 100°C for…

• Serves 1 · ¥580

• Cook time 30 min

Edible sea urchin and abalone soup, seaweed-flavored pureed soup, grilled scallop with sea urchin, and abalone simmered to absorb the sauce

This is a modern arrangement of a local dish. We wanted to newly express, using the techniques of Japanese cuisine, the local dish ichigo-ni that has…

• Serves 1 · ¥300

• Cook time 1 hr