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Japanese Show What It Takes To Dazzle the Culinary Judges
Ichiro Ozaki spices fish at his 16-seat restaurant, which in November was awarded one star in the celebrated Michelin Guide's first-ever Tokyo edition.
(By Blaine Harden -- The Washington Post)
Photos | Tokyo Panoramas Sensoji Temple and Asakusa-Jinja are testaments to the peaceful coexistence of Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan. TOOLBOX
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Competition among Tokyo restaurants is "unimaginably tough," Tani said, and a chef-owner cannot survive unless he is willing to sacrifice in a way that "extracts the very essence of his self onto the plate."
"It is pride and ambition that bind us," Tani said, speaking of his fellow chefs. "The food we serve is a reflection of how we live."
As he spoke, Tani was sitting in the dining room of his restaurant. It was midafternoon. Downstairs in the kitchen, his staff was beginning to prepare dinner. It would include sea-urchin flan, a warm salad with salted pork from the Pyrenees Mountains, fried sea bream and a red-wine consomme flavored with rabbit, deer and wild boar.
Curry in Harmony
To partake of the prix-fixe samurai spirit at Le Mange-Tout, you must reserve a month in advance and then pay a minimum of $200 per person.
But high quality in Tokyo restaurant food doesn't require a high price -- or a Michelin star. Consider the curry bun that is the specialty of Bistro Kirakutei, a curry joint that sits in the shadow of an elevated highway not far from Shibuya Station, one of the world's business commuter hubs.
The curry bun is a sweet doughnut wrapped around a deep green dollop of mild English-style curry. The onions in the curry are slow-fried for four hours. Once cooked, the curry is given a day of rest before it marries its doughnut. Only about 400 of these buns are made each day, all by hand.
"I have found the perfect harmony of curry sauce and dough," explains Hideki Okubo, who experimented with spices and curry powder for six months until he got it right.
That was 24 years ago, and his curry bun has since become something of a legend in Tokyo. Okubo said he has been offered lucrative deals to mass-market it but has never seriously considered doing so.
"A restaurant has to have one thing that stands out," he said. "For us, it is our bun."
Yamamoto, the food writer, has eaten Okubo's curry bun, which costs $2.50, and he has eaten the pricey fare at Le Mange-Tout. He believes the creators of these foods share identical values.
"They do not believe that success is measured by cash," Yamamoto said. "They measure it by giving happiness to eaters."
Living With a Star
After a long afternoon of deboning turtles, skinning blowfish and slicing the bulbous livers of anglerfish, Ozaki greets his first customers at 6 p.m.
