The Japanese Origins of Modern Fine Dining
September 9, 2017 8:06 AM   Subscribe

Meghan McCarron on how Japanese chefs and traditions have shaped global luxury cuisine for the past 50 years.

"Around the world, a single aesthetic dominates the uppermost echelons of fine dining: The courses will be small and many. The plates and vessels will be distinct, often rustic, and sometimes surprising. The elaborate plating demands precision, either to execute a clever visual joke, or to produce a heart-stopping evocation of terroir. And all of these bites tell a story — of an ingredient, a person, or a very specific place. Each of these stories is unique, but not so unique that Central in Lima cannot be compared to Gaggan in Bangkok. Where, exactly, did this intense, exacting, intellectual form of haute cuisine come from?"
posted by gen (19 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
In my experience kaiseki is subtly but significantly different from a Western-style degustation menu. On the surface they're both series of small dishes - I always think 8 is a good start, 10-12 is ideal, maybe 16+ is where it starts to get silly (yes, Heston, I'm looking at you). The difference is that haute cuisine in the west tends to aim to amaze and delight with every dish, every forkful, every plate raising the game from that which went before. Kaiseki is more holistic. You'd never get, for example, a simple plate of cut fruit in a Michelin starred restaurant in the west, yet it's right there on the menu at one of Kyoto's oldest and best kaiseki places.

Japanese kaiseki is more considered, more careful, more zen than the western version. Which is as you'd expect. Kaiseki is so much more of an experience than just a load of plates of food. It is, perhaps, more like the difference between a symphony and a band playing a bunch of songs one after each other. Both are great ways to dine (or listen to music), of course, and I'm absolutely in favour of culinary cross-pollination of technique, style and (especially) flavour.

Without wanting to get too weeaboo on the subject, I've never eaten as well, anywhere in the world, as I've eaten in Japan. The author's doubts that Tokyo isn't the new Paris are sort of right but that's only because Paris hasn't been the old anything for a long time. Toyko isn't even the new London, Sydney or New York, because Tokyo has been top of the international food game for long enough that the old places are just that - old.
posted by auntie-matter at 8:39 AM on September 9, 2017 [14 favorites]


You'd never get, for example, a simple plate of cut fruit in a Michelin starred restaurant in the west

Chez Panisse had a Michelin star for several years, and has served unadorned fruit.
posted by kenko at 9:45 AM on September 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


OK, fair enough. I haven't been to all the restaurants (yet, working on it....)

But generally you wouldn't, and Chez Panisse only have/had one star (not trying to suggest that a 'mere' one Michelin star isn't impressive, of course). I've never seen something like that at a 3 star restaurant in the west, but have in Japan.
posted by auntie-matter at 9:50 AM on September 9, 2017


After making my comment I realized it was kind of a "gotcha". You're more likely to find that sort of thing at a certain style of CA restaurant and the general point stands.
posted by kenko at 10:02 AM on September 9, 2017


In my experience kaiseki is subtly but significantly different from a Western-style degustation menu.

I don't think the author of the piece (which I really enjoyed) would disagree with you and I don't think your accurate description would disprove the theses there. That said, nice context. I haven't had proper kaiseki in a decade and your comment has lit the fire in my belly to try to find it in northern Europe somewhere.
posted by thedaniel at 10:12 AM on September 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's meant to be flattering, I suppose, that Japan has seemed worth appropriating, but let's be honest: "fine dining" is pretty much a codeword for Eurocentric dining. And you can't win at this game unless you play the Eurocentric way.

In India, with some exceptions, eating at a restaurant is what you do when you don't care very much about food. Fine dining happens at home.

This is changing a little bit now (capitalism!) but there is not one Michelin restaurant in India. Not one.

So let's keep in mind the cultural specificity and inherent bullshitness of "fine dining" before speaking of how it applies across cultures.
posted by splitpeasoup at 10:39 AM on September 9, 2017 [4 favorites]


There are several Michelin ***three star*** restaurants in China, though only one on the Mainland: T'ang Court in Shanghai.
posted by chrchr at 10:44 AM on September 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm under the impression that whether a country has restaurants with Michelin stars requires first that Michelin guide actually be in the market of publishing a guide for that purpose. India doesn't have a Michelin starred restaurant because Michelin doesn't publish a guide that covers the market.

While I agree that Michelin guides tend to favor French cuisines that hardly means other cuisines aren't awarded stars (cf Hong Kong, Singapore, China, London Michelin guides, and the Indian restaurants in those guides with stars).

I agree the fine dining does specify a certain type of restaurant with a certain level of flourish and service, but I don't think it denotes superiority of one type of cuisine over another.
posted by Karaage at 11:05 AM on September 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


I want to know how that magical dashi is made, and how it's used to construct the broth in the first photo, but there is basically no English language reference book that I know of that would describe these methods in detail.

I'm Asian American so I love Japanese food, French, Hong Kong food (i.e., due to their global influence, not out of any value-based preference). I think this article subtly/gently argues that Japanese cuisine is more thoughtful and contemplative, and Westernized appropriations of their cooking decontextualizes something in the translation and potentially makes Western fine dining unconsciously crass, elitist, gaudy. I actually had the time/chance to look through Tabelog a few thousand restaurants in Kyoto, and I would not eat at their French restaurants for a dual reason--I'm sure the food is really good, but all the pictures I saw weren't really like the kind of cooking at Eleven Madison Park or Noma but rather a modified cuisine of contemporary Western food done through a Japanese lens by a Japanese chef, for a Japanese audience. But to me that's an example of how these cultural issues and questions don't have obvious answers and have some complexity to it.
posted by polymodus at 11:36 AM on September 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


@polymodus - I don't know if this is how things are done in Japan, but if you make your broth and employ gelatin clarification, that should get you at least a bit close to the result you're after. It's easy enough to do, just takes a little time. Avoiding/removing the colour so it looks like water is going to be more of a challenge.
posted by auntie-matter at 11:43 AM on September 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


Tasting menu culture isnt Michelin, its San Pellegrino

And Japanese impact on modern French dining is huge, but is only a tertiary influencer in tasting menu world SP stuff. Mostly through those 90s chefs like bras et. al who influenced Adria and the other Spanish folks twenty years ago. Who basically drove the tasting format to the form it dominates in a certain style of resto.

Which I guess is basically wtfa is saying with a bit more color on more recent stuff.
posted by JPD at 1:20 PM on September 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


This is changing a little bit now (capitalism!) but there is not one Michelin restaurant in India. Not one.

There isn't a Michelin get therefore there can't be ratings. There is basically zero chance Indian Accent in Delhi wouldn't have multiple stars. I'd also guess a place like Bukhara would get one ( hands down the best flatbread of any style I've ever had)

But Michelin sucks at non " fine dining" everywhere. Like only in the last few years have they begun to recognize the amazing vernacular restaurants in Western Europe.

It's got so much cache but fundamentally it's a very narrow guide.
posted by JPD at 1:27 PM on September 9, 2017


Chez Panisse had a Michelin star for several years, and has served unadorned fruit.

...and was famously mocked by David Chang for it. A few years back he remarked that what was happening in California is that you'd get a plate with some figs on it, and that's it. Entertaining snark and all but kind of ironic given how much time Chang spent in Japan--Japanese ideas about food have a lot in common with modern Californian cuisine.
posted by danny the boy at 2:29 PM on September 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


either to execute a clever visual joke

literally no such thing has ever happened in a restaurant.

There’s a tendency in food writing right now to claim that everything in Japan is better


I mean

there sure is

anyway, this is all very well but it is plated and served in such a way as to give people an excuse to blame Japan for the ubiquity of the exquisitely tiresome smallplate fancyplace. which is not fair. the blame must be equally divided among everyone who has ever cooked, waited, menu-planned, or dined at such a place. centuries of tradition and influence is no excuse for the living not to bear our share of the guilt.

(I am with her as far as being pro-context. though I have some reservations insofar as it is an acceptable euphemism for purity. still, every time I go out I have to worry that jose andres is going to put a whole raw salmon into a blender with a tres leches cake and serve it to me as a clever culture-bridging smoothie so every day I understand the allure of uncorrupted culinary traditions a little bit better. even though glorifying them is always suspect.)

( it's not even about authenticity versus fusion or even context. it's more just, if I were to rampage into the kitchen -- any kitchen around here -- and ask the staff to find me just ten righteous men who could explain to me why the plates are so small and why there are so many of them, I bet they couldn't do it. "We don't know! Everybody does it!" they would say.)
posted by queenofbithynia at 3:17 PM on September 9, 2017 [5 favorites]


For the Durham/Chapel Hill/Raleigh MeFites: Yamazushi is a kaiseki restaurant in Durham. They also have an amazing variety of tea, especially green tea, and hand-made pottery; every dish is served on a unique hand-made piece made, I think, by the chef.
posted by amtho at 3:20 PM on September 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


and was famously mocked by David Chang for it.

OTOH, David Chang is an ass, so …
posted by kenko at 6:40 PM on September 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


I have to worry that jose andres is going to put a whole raw salmon into a blender with a tres leches cake and serve it to me as a clever culture-bridging smoothie

Restaurants aside, his PBS show, Maid In Spain, was one of my favorites, and very unmolecular. Very simple ingredients, fresh, bright, I wanted to eat everything.

OTOH, David Chang is an ass, so …

I loved the concept of Lucky Peach, the individual recipes, and specific story ideas, but I found the overall tone off-putting. I haven't shared similar feelings about Bourdain, so it's no surprise really. (None of which is a reflection of their cooking abilities.)
posted by Room 641-A at 9:34 PM on September 9, 2017


Chez Panisse had a Michelin star for several years, and has served unadorned fruit.

...and was famously mocked by David Chang for it.


I didn't use to order the bowl of fruit at Chez Panisse (the cafe upstairs) until one lunch where the guy at the table behind me was raving about the plums* or pluots or whatever was the fruit of the day. Once we got through our entree, we skeptically ordered the fruit bowl on the strength of the overheard exaltations. And it was MARVELOUS. One of those you-have-to-be-there incredible moments. How can a piece of fruit hold such sweetness, such juiciness?! And make me feel so happy, so alive?!

Places like Chez Panisse can get away with it because they have the real thing, the goods to deliver on their mission statement, like fruit so delicious you can just serve it by itself. No luck replicating it with supermarket fruit here...I've not forgotten that pluot (even though I may have forgotten Chang's pork buns).

*Unlocked: new appreciation for "This is just to say"
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 2:43 AM on September 10, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm under the impression that whether a country has restaurants with Michelin stars requires first that Michelin guide actually be in the market of publishing a guide for that purpose.

Which is why even Los Angeles has zero Michelin star restaurants (a few that advertise their now-very-old status from way back when there was a guide, but thats not very reliable to what they're like today in many cases).

You can only compare Michelin cities to other Michelin cities, and how they choose which cities to rate is beyond me.
posted by thefoxgod at 12:37 PM on September 11, 2017


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