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Served in a Hollowed, Masu-Shaped Daikon Cup

Simmered, Grilled, Fried — Recommendations

Eel in checkerboard pattern

For the grilled dish, the eel ichimatsu: burdock and carrot are cut into thick strips and sautéed kinpira-style with a sweet-savory seasoning, then…

Thigh Meat with Pickled Plum Dressing

Thigh Meat with Pickled Plum Dressing — sanbaizu, a three-part sweetened vinegar dressing Vinegar: 200cc Bonito dashi: 100cc Sugar: 50g Higashimaru…

Senba-Style Soup with Seared Autumn Mackerel and Late-Season Winter Melon Roll

For the soup course's Senba-style, mackerel bones and trimmings are sprinkled with salt and sake and left for about 20 minutes to remove the odor…

Layered serving paper and folded paper

Shiwasu, the old name for December, is said to come from a time of year so busy that even priests, or shi, are said to run about, or hashiru — though…

New Year's mochi soup

This is the clear-soup course. With whale, the difficulty lies in how to rehydrate it and how to remove its odor. I take a block of whale hongawa…

• ¥700

• Cook time 3 hr

Color-simmered winter melon, eel turned inside out

The takiawase is mi-gaeshi eel. Starting from the neck, I turn the eel's flesh inside out along the bone. Before that, I make sure to remove the…

Burdock root with perilla seed dressing

Crab Salad

This crab salad is the opening course. We boil the crab, pick the meat apart, season it, and gather it into a cylinder, then wrap taro stem around…

Fat greenling grilled with burdock

For the fat greenling yawata-yaki, rinse the fat greenling, score the bones with fine honekiri cuts, marinate it in a san-do-wari - an equal-parts…

Deep-fried whiting burdock roll

As for the deep-fried whiting yawata-maki in the fried course, whiting good enough to serve even as sashimi comes in cheaply and in large quantities…

Grilled Twin-Layered Pike Conger

The grilled twin-layered pike conger dish comes from an idea I had: when you bone-cut pike conger that has rested two to three days, scrap meat…

Grilled burdock-wrapped loach, eel-style, basket-weave spiral-cut squid

The grilled course's loach, wrapped around burdock the way you would wrap eel, calls for boiling new-season burdock until soft, to balance the loach…

Baby turnip stuffed inro-style

As for the simmered oyster tofu: fold finely sieved oysters into a tamago-dōfu (savory egg custard) base, steam it, and let it absorb the flavor —…

Sea Bream Autumn-Brocade Grill

For the grilled course, I made three pieces of sea bream autumn-brocade grill, styled to evoke autumn foliage.

Iwaki shellfish bake, sea bream and burdock root roll, abalone and sea urchin grill

All of the ingredients are sourced from Iwaki. The sea bream and burdock root roll is a well-matched pairing — sea bream at this time of year is rich…

• ¥345

• Cook time 30 min

Burdock Tazuna-Age Stuffed with Scallop, Shrimp Fried in Arare Crumb

These are the deep-fried dishes. Burdock Tazuna-Age: scallop is worked into a fine paste and stuffed into the burdock, then twisted and deep-fried in…

Fat greenling grilled with an egg glaze, conger eel rolled into a spiral

This is the grilled course. Alongside the ainame ro-yaki and conger eel naruto-maki, though not on the menu, I also skewer crab shinjo and hosta…

Tilefish burdock roll, Chinese yam sliced into snow rings

This is the simmered soup bowl course. For the tilefish burdock roll: the burdock is hollowed into a tube shape and simmered in a clear-soup stock…

Snowflake-grilled dish

Sado yellowtail grilled with perilla

Tortoiseshell-style simmered softshell turtle

In keeping with the moon-viewing season, this plays on the idiom "the moon and the softshell turtle" (tsuki to suppon — things that resemble each…

Burdock, mitsuba, and carrot kakiage, a new twist

For the burdock, mitsuba, and carrot kakiage with a twist, we kept the texture by coarsely mincing small kuruma prawns by hand. Besides deep-fried…