A chef’s tour of Tokyo’s food scene

It’s a Monday afternoon at the Tsujkiji branch of the Tokyo Sushi Academy and we are about to be tested. Or at least I am. Most of the other students participating in the Japanese Culinary Intensive Course are professionals. They are local or from abroad and are simply polishing their skills or adding to their repertoire. My bankmate works with charter yachts from Australia. Our sensei, chef Hiro Tsumoto saw a tattoo on his forearm with Japanese characters and shouted, “Hey, that’s my aunt’s name!”

I am one of the citizens that the academy also welcomes to the course. I’m definitely here for the challenge. But right now I definitely feel in over my head.

Mr. Hiro, who is also one of the founders of the academy, walked us through the basics of kaiseki, a word used for both the traditional multi-course Japanese meal and the skills and techniques required to make it .. This covers a bewildering array of things, including how to use a knife to score the top of a shiitake mushroom, how to tie a sprig of the herb Mitsuba for garnish, and the precise temperature to flavor dashi stock. made from kombu to extract the best. seaweed and katsuobushi, or dried bonito fish chips. On the subject of kaiseki, Mr. Hiro becomes briefly philosophical, noting that it is a lifelong practice and thus approaches the unspeakable.

‘Just like the kappa. What actually is the kappa?” he says, by way of winking explanation. “Okay, let’s cook!”

I only find out later that the kappa is a mythical reptilian creature that loves cucumbers and sumo. Right now I have to jump into the fray of all these professionals grabbing pots and grills and gathering ingredients for the fish stew we are preparing.

My first order has arrived at the imaginary pass: an individual kaiseki portion of clear fish soup, osumashi, for example. My heart is racing. My hands are shaking. This has to be the most pressure I have ever experienced on what a holiday should be. But I love it.

A new respect for tempura and other classics

There are more obvious ways to explore Tokyo’s food scene. Following the Michelin stars makes sense considering that this year the Michelin Guide lists 198 restaurants with a total of 261 stars, more than any other city in the world. But you can also arrive here without a nutrition plan.

Tokyo may initially seem chaotic to visitors, but discovery and happiness are important parts of the city’s charms. If you find yourself looking for a peaceful corner – as you probably will from time to time – you may come across a gem. For example, if you wander away from the hustle and bustle of the Tsukiji Outdoor Market, you might trip over a worn linoleum staircase at Namiyoke-dori and find yourself in the Tohto Grill. It’s a cafe. No Michelin star at the moment or likely. But there are truck drivers here who eat plates of fried horse mackerel and stewed beef tendon. There is a jukebox and a cigarette machine and the tuna sashimi breakfast set with sauerkraut and whitebait is unpretentiously perfect.

I have found that cooking school adds a layer to one’s explorations. And you don’t need a week at the Tokyo Sushi Academy either. I did a three-hour soba intensive with it Tokyo chef and a one-hour fruit carving class at the Takano Fruit Parlor.

In the most obvious case, things you have taken for granted will bring new respect. Or at least, if you’re me, you’ll reconsider your long-standing indifference to tempura. It’s just too hard to be indifferent to it. Before starting cooking school, I had never thought about the perfect temperature difference between the battered item and the oil it is cooked in, for example, which is 295 degrees.

I also didn’t think that if you were skilled enough you could cook most of the tempura Year of birth. Bee Tempura Kondo, where the two Michelin stars induce a reverent silence among the guests (good to listen to), you can watch it all unfold as an insider’s floor show. Tempura masters are busier than sushi chefs, Mr. Hiro said, and they never talk to the customers. Why? Well, because they stand over the oil with their ears pricked to hear the ‘pulse’ of the sound, which waxes and wanes as the bubbles shrink and the dish nears completion.

And that was just the beginning of the drama. Without spending a few hours sweating over my academy prep, would I have noticed the knife cuts fanning my miniature eggplant, or the way the paper was folded kimono-style on my plate, or the daikon ginger garnish being scooped into a container ? come to look like a bozu the bald head of the temple master?

You’ll find the same technical fixation behind most Japanese culinary preparations. You might hear the word datsusara when talking to food people here. I first heard it from the ramen expert Brian MacDuckstonwith whom I ate Yakitori Yamamoto near Mitaka station. The word datsusara captures the idea of ​​escaping the rat race and is associated with chefs who come from the corporate world and focus their fastidious devotion on food instead. But it speaks more generally to a detail-oriented pursuit of food perfection.

Yakitori restaurants are fascinating places to observe the phenomenon. The chef often stands right in front of you, leaning over the clay grill filled with binchotan charcoal, minutely inspecting the skewers, pinching them to test doneness and dipping them in tare sauce to exactly 80 percent. After you try this, you’ll also know that when the grill guy throws away one of those skewers, it was because the prep guy didn’t balance it properly to keep it from rolling out of place.

“That’s why you spend three years preparing skewers before you touch the grill,” Mr. Hiro said.

Bee Yakitori Yoneda, just south of Nishi-Ogikubo Station, I noticed how the tsukune, or chicken meatballs, arrive perfectly charred, just a little bit sweet, with perfect flavor from the potato starch added to the mixture the night before grilling. I lie down under the red awning, away from the rain, with a skewer of medium-cooked chicken livers and another skewer of crispy chicken skin. The tsukune here is plump, the size of a small zucchini. And when it arrives with the diced onion and soft fried egg, I enjoy it even more because I experience the perfect execution. It’s still one of the best plates I’ve had in many visits to Tokyo.

Yoneda also illustrates another point: You don’t have to spend a lot of money to have these “best bite” moments. Good, cheap yakitori in Tokyo will cost you about 400 yen, or about $2.65, for a few skewers. I think cooking classes actually lower the price of fun because you can see how amazing the technique can be in many everyday restaurants in Tokyo.

The Michelin star Kondo restaurant has wonderful tempura, without a doubt. But so does… Ginza Hageten, just down the street and for a fraction of the price. Here the lunch crowd flows through, jazz plays in the background and your vegetable tempura, rice and bowl of noodles all come together.

I had the same experience exploring tonkatsu, that ubiquitous panko-fried pork loin that often comes alongside a pile of shaved cabbage. It’s ethereal good at it Butagumi, where you can choose from dozens of pork varieties amid woody elegance and where no one is allowed to wear perfume in the dining room. But it’s also pretty good at it Thanks Tonkatsu, around the corner from Demboin Shrine in Asakusa. When I ate there Yukari Sakamotothe author of the guidebook ‘Food Sake Tokyo’, we sat shoulder to shoulder with anyone who happened to be hungry and walking by.

A slurpable bowl of heaven

In the Tokyo chef kitchen at Sougo in Roppongi, I spent an afternoon learning soba from chef Shinichi Yoshida, a nice gentleman who wears a shirt and tie under his apron. Mr. Yoshida guided me through the history of buckwheat in Japan. He explained dashi to the glutamine content of various types of kombu seaweed, a key ingredient. He shaved Katsuobushi for the dashi from his own block of bonito, dry-aged for five years, the cut surface darkly translucent like a black gemstone. We made the noodles by hand, rolling out the tricky low-gluten dough with a long dowel, then cutting it into 1/16-inch ribbons with a huge menkiri. knife, the handle wrapped with shark skin.

I’ve only eaten a few bowls of noodles in Tokyo that came close to the gorgeous dish Mr. Yoshida showed me that day, with its perfectly balanced dipping sauce of five parts dashi and one part kaeshi, a slow-simmered marriage of soy, sugar and dark mirin. The first of these was to Teuchi Soba Fujiya in Shinjuku, recommended by Mr. Hiro of the Tokyo Sushi Academy, where a line of people forms 30 minutes before they open and your meal comes with a small jug of soba cooking liquid to drink after your meal to aid digestion.

I found the second perfect bowl at a chain called Tokyo Abura Soba with 60 Japanese locations, where you order from a vending machine and get your bowl of noodles with chashu pork in about three minutes. Abura soba is not soba at all. It is a bowl of ramen noodles without broth, roughened in a sauce made with soy, broth powder, sugar, vinegar and white miso or Chinese doubanjiang. It’s crazy delicious. It’s also addictive. But I wouldn’t have known what set of rules had to be broken on the way to this slurpable bowl of heaven if Mr. Yoshida hadn’t immediately shown me the exacting perfection of “real” soba.

How the pros do it

My osumashi Clear fish soup doesn’t turn out bad in the end. My salmon slices are a bit uneven. And my mitsuba trim is tied in a granny knot instead of a reef knot. Still, after the adrenaline rush and the frantic placement of each ingredient in just the right place in the bowl, I get the dish done on time.

Mr. Hiro nods, amused by my efforts. And back on my bench I catch a glance from my yacht chef colleague who gives me a subdued nod of approval. “You’re fast,” he admits.

Then I go to Nakajima for Kaiseki to see how the real professionals do it. Eleven brilliant dishes. Or maybe twelve. I’ve lost count. I linger longer on one dish than another, the dashi so bright in the black-lacquered wooden owan bowl that I can barely see it. But I smell the kombu, the katsuobushi. I see that the fish and vegetables are all perfectly placed. And as I take a bite of the delicate fish and a sip of that smoky broth, I get a glimpse of the years it must have taken to become so good at something so simple and so difficult.

The soup is beyond delicious. I empty the bowl.

If you go

Bee Tohto Grillsimple meals cost 950 to 1,500 yen, or about $6.50 to $10.

Have lunch at Tempura Kondo runs from 8,800 to 12,100 yen. Dinner ranges from 14,300 to 23,100 yen.

Bee Yakitori Yamamoto, plates are from 210 to 980 yen. Bee Yakitori Yonedathey range from 185 to 320 yen.

Bee ButagumiPork loin and fillet cutlet meals cost 2,000 to 4,200 yen.

Bee Thank you Tonkotsua meal costs about 2,100 yen.

Have lunch at Teuchi Soba Fujiya ranges from 1,200 to 2,000 yen.

Noodle bowls start at 880 yen Tokyo Abura Soba.