Tokyo
Mahaz News
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Inside a dimly lit eating room, chef Tomoya Kawada of Sazenka is drawing a yin-yang diagram on a notepad as he explains his desires for the distant future.
“World peace through food,” he says.
Such phrases may simply be dismissed as idealistic hyperbole. But coming from Kawada, they sound virtually reassuring – and even attainable.
After all, this Japanese chef has achieved a feat no different restaurateur has earlier than; he’s created the world’s solely three-Michelin-star Chinese restaurant in a non-Chinese-speaking metropolis. Not a straightforward job within the tightly guarded world of Chinese kitchens.
Set inside a former diplomat’s home in a quiet upscale residential district, Sazenka’s rise was swift. It was awarded two stars by the Michelin Guide in 2017 – the identical yr it opened. Another star was added in 2020 and it has held on to all three within the years since.
To spotlight simply how spectacular it’s, it’s value nothing there are solely seven different different Chinese eating places on the planet with three Michelin stars, and people are in Hong Kong, Macao, Taipei and Beijing.
The Tokyo restaurant was additionally named the eleventh finest restaurant in Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards in 2022, the second highest rating Chinese restaurant on the listing.
“I’m not there yet,” the common-or-garden chef says of his achievements.
“It’s only been six years. I’m sure we can make even better food, provide better service and make our customers more satisfied.”
The crew has a number of day by day conferences as a part of efforts to attain these targets.
“Unfortunately, I’ll probably not feel satisfied with the results until I die,” says Kawada. “But we’re growing and we’re happy. It’s like climbing a mountain – we reach one summit and something else begins. But when we look back, I still think it was fun when we were climbing.”
The restaurant’s poetic identify, Sazenka, is made up three phrases that imply tea, zen and Chinese. The restaurant’s 11-course feast, excluding small bites, pairing teas and desserts, feels extra like a aware kaiseki expertise than a conventional Chinese banquet. The price? About $450 per particular person.
It begins with a bowl of somen noodles served in a mixture of clear broth and tea oil in a blue-and-white porcelain stem cup, and ends with a candy rice ball floating in a light tea soup.
The menu’s regional Chinese dishes, from Cantonese char siu (honey-glazed roast pork) to Sichuan pepper pigeon, are infused with a uniquely Japanese contact.
For Kawada, the menu he’s created for Sazenka is a childhood dream come true. His love for Chinese meals took seed when he was simply 5 years previous, after his dad and mom took him to a Chinese restaurant in Japan’s Tochigi prefecture.
“I vividly remember that moment, when I was attracted by the beauty and the deliciousness of Chinese food,” he says.
“There had been dishes named bang bang hen, mapo tofu or yun bai rou (cloudy pork slices). I used to be fascinated by their magnificence. I may see the magnificent Chinese panorama within the meals.
“I was so impressed by it that I decided I would become a Chinese chef in the future.”
At 18 years previous, he obtained a job contained in the kitchen of Azabu Choko, a now-closed Sichuanese restaurant in Tokyo. He labored there for a decade earlier than switching to Japanese delicacies and coaching underneath chef Seiji Yamamoto of RyuGin for 5 years.
But over time, he visited China usually to see the landscapes and deepen his understanding of the delicacies.
In 2017, he started to develop his personal model of Chinese delicacies and Sazenka was born.
“There is a Japanese phase called Wakon-Kansai (Japanese spirit and Chinese talent),” Kawada says, when requested to outline his delicacies.
“Sazenka’s food is based on Sichuan cuisine with a Japanese spirit and a Chinese sensibility.”
The set-course menu is stuffed with showstoppers, all highlighting the chef’s meticulous Chinese and Japanese cooking strategies.
The Sichuan Pepper Pigeon is ready in two methods – its thighs are cooked to crispy perfection within the Cantonese fashion, whereas the breast is given the Japanese yakitori therapy – skewered and grilled.
The Sichuan-inspired dish of Cloudy Pork Slices options superbly marbled pork layered with skinny eggplant slices lower into the form of feathers.
The Jellyfish Salad is delicately sliced and plated in a small bowl carved out of a Japanese sudachi citrus.
But out of all of Sazenka’s wealthy and expressive dishes, Kawada chooses the humblest of all of them to symbolize his restaurant: the pheasant soup, impressed by Hong Kong’s wonton soup, that includes one floating pork dumpling in clear broth.
“Hong Kong’s premium stock is amazingly delicious. I always wondered what would happen if I tried to express the taste of Japanese stock in Chinese cuisine,” says Kawada.
To make the “simple soup,” as he calls it, the pheasant’s bones should be pounded and soaked in water in a single day. They’re then boiled in excessive warmth until the blood comes out and is eliminated. The remaining bones are then boiled down for about 4 hours.
The broth might want to relaxation for one more day earlier than minced pheasant meat, Jinhua-cured ham, kelp, inexperienced onions, ginger, 15-year-old Shaoxing wine, salt and pepper are added to season the clear inventory.
“The moment you put it in your mouth, the taste is nothing striking but very gentle,” says the chef.
“But gradually, the deliciousness comes. The deepness of this deliciousness is a strength of Japanese cuisine. The spirit of Japanese cuisine is a dish that makes you think, ‘I really enjoyed that pheasant soup’ only three days later. This pheasant soup is the world of Japanese cuisine represented in one bowl.”
The soup can be the right illustration of Sazenka’s Wakon-Kansai philosophy, which has nothing to do with re-creating genuine Chinese dishes in Japan.
“I’d always thought that authentic cuisines from their original places are the best. But I think the development of a culture is only possible when it travels. So now, I think creating a cuisine, be it Sichuan or Japanese, that makes people feel comfortable is an outstanding achievement,” says Kawada.
For him, consuming is extra than simply an exercise however “a beautiful way to communicate peace.”
In his view, all of it goes again to that yin-yang Taiji image.
“If Japanese cuisine is black and Chinese cuisine is white, the fusion of the two will make a gray circle,” he says, noting that as a substitute, the 2 cuisines ought to co-exist just like the black and white dots within the Yin-Yang diagram.
“It isn’t fusion but harmony, which is made up of two Chinese characters – cho and wa (mix and together) – without erasing the goodness of Japanese cuisine and Chinese cuisine in each other.”
He factors to Japanese meals as being a delicacies that has achieved this goal by incorporating the culinary strategies and elements of varied cultures from everywhere in the world.
“I think the idea of Wakon-Kansai is wonderful. It shows how people strongly believed that Japanese and Chinese cultures should get along with each other more than 1,000 years ago, and that we should respect each other’s good points.”
Though the idea of Wakon-Kansai originated within the Heian interval (794-1185), he says it nonetheless applies to many relationships on the planet at the moment.
“Cooking is about a consideration for the earth and it’s also about the relationship between countries,” says Kawada.
“I hope Sazenka can be seen in this way as a symbol of world peace by getting along through food. That’s the idea I have when I am approaching my cooking.”
Source web site: www.cnn.com
