"frying wizard" | Mikawa Zezankyo - みかわ是山居 - Tokyo

We ate our share of sushi while in Japan, but sushi is not the be all and end all of Japanese cuisine. While planning our trip, several smart people told us we needed to, among other things, fit in at least one tempura meal while we were there. And just a couple weeks before we left, the New York Times ran a piece on one of Tokyo's high-end tempura temples, noting that such places are virtually nonexistent in the U.S.

It's not that you can't find tempura in the States; indeed, many Japanese restaurants here try to do a little bit of everything, folding tempura, sushi, yakitori, ramen, soba and stir-fries all into the same menu.^[1] But Japan is a place where specialists thrive. And at several restaurants in Japan, the art of tempura frying is treated with the same reverence and respect as we typically see only devoted to sushi. To experience it, we opted for Mikawa Zezankyo, a small place in a quiet neighborhood fairly close by the beautiful Kiyosumi Garden.

(You can see all my pictures in this Mikawa Zezankyo flickr set.)

Mikawa Zezankyo is in some ways a faithfully traditional place: you remove your shoes before being seated in one of the nine spots that surround the counter, and the menu – with ink-brushed calligraphy and illustrations – largely consists of the same kinds of "Edomae-tempura" items that would have been served a hundred years ago. But it is also quirkily individualistic: the chef apparently has a penchant for fedoras, which appear in various guises throughout the restaurant, including the massive brass exhaust fan over the cooking area.

The restaurant appears to be a three-person operation: Chef Tetsuya Saotome tends to the actual frying, as an assistant readies each course, and a server circulates behind the guests pouring drinks, clearing plates, and periodically swapping out the paper on which each item is deposited after it emerges from the bubbling oil. The first of these - all served one by one in an omakase style procession – is a plump ebi (shrimp), whose thin sheen of crispy batter only barely obscures its bright orange stripes. The chef recommends dipping in nothing but salt for this first bite, and he's right: its flavor is pure, clean and sweet, its texture still tender and supple once the delicate tempura casing is breached.

A second one follows, so you can also try the shrimp with the light, translucent soy and dashi dipping sauce bolstered with grated daikon oroshi. I had always been puzzled by the custom of serving tempura with a watery dipping sauce. Why go through all the trouble of creating this crispy exterior if you're going to just dunk it and make it all soggy? But here, anyway, the tempura coating still maintained some of its crunch even after being run through the dipping sauce, providing a further contrast of textures. Next, my favorite part, the shrimp's heads, crispy bites bursting with oceanic goodness.

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"through the narrow door" | Sushi Yoshitake - 鮨よしたけ - Tokyo

Perhaps it was over-ambitious to have made a dinner reservation for the evening of our arrival in Tokyo, after about seventeen hours of travel. But it seemed foolish to miss any opportunity. As it turned out, we had just enough time to retrieve our bags from the airport carousel, hop on the train, transfer to the subway, get lost in the Shinbashi Station, find our way (with some assistance) to the hotel, check in, drop our bags, splash some water on our faces, and hail a taxi to Sushi Yoshitake in nearby Ginza.

When we arrived, our driver pointed up to make sure we understood that the restaurant was on the third floor of what appeared to be a nondescript office building. After exiting the elevator, we spotted the kanji that matched the picture our hotel concierge had provided us, fumbled with the door,^[1] and then nearly stumbled right on top of six diners seated along a wooden counter in a room smaller than many walk-in closets. A hostess politely shooed us back outside, then directed us across the landing to what appeared to be a cupboard built into the wall. We assumed she was going to put our coats away there. Instead, she opened the door and beckoned us inside.

We stepped through the narrow door, crouched into a tight passageway, and emerged into an even smaller room - if the first one was a walk-in closet, this was a broom closet - which was our private little sushi den for the evening. So this is what a Michelin three-star restaurant looks like in Tokyo.

(You can see all my pictures in this Sushi Yoshitake flickr set).

The chef,^[2] in halting English, asked if we had any dietary restrictions. "We eat everything." That was put to the test immediately. The first course, our first bite in Japan, was a chawanmushi topped with fugu shirako. I fully processed these words^[3] only after having taken a couple bites. "Fugu" is pufferfish - potentially lethally poisonous if prepared improperly. "Shirako" is milt or "soft roe," i.e., the fish's, er, laden male genitalia. The shirako is one of the most sought-after delicacies from the fugu fish, and February, it turns out, is high season for both fugu and shirako in Japan.^[4]

Blistered from a quick sear on the grill, the shirako was warm, creamy and subtly oceanic, its texture and flavor nearly blending into the silky, dashi-inflected custard on which it rested - a warming welcome on a cold evening. It was neither as gross as you might think nor, frankly, so delicious as to warrant risking death.^[5]

Several rounds of sashimi followed. Octopus, cut in big blocks, had three distinct textures - the thin membrane and suckers with an almost crispy pellicle, beneath which a delicate, gelatinous layer surrounded the main part of the tentacle, which was tender with just a bit of pleasing chew to it. Next, stacked slivers of pink-hued amadei (tilefish), just the skin seared, were served with a soy sauce infused with the fish's bones.

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Japan - Impressions, Travel Tips, and a List

It is both humbling and exhilarating to be a foreigner in a foreign land. Before our two-week trip to Japan, from which we returned this weekend, I had never been to the Far East. For those who are veteran globetrotters it may sound silly, but I'll confess I was a bit intimidated by the prospect of being literally halfway across the world in a place where we not only didn't know, but couldn't even decipher the characters of, the native language. But that fear was more than outbalanced by our love of Japanese culture and food, and the desire to experience them first-hand.

We needn't have been so concerned. Literally from the moment we arrived, we were buoyed by the graciousness, thoughtfulness, and generosity of spirit of the Japanese people. As we wandered our way through the Shinbashi subway station dragging luggage behind us, a kind lady - who spoke no English whatsoever - helped us figure out where our hotel was, and then walked with us for nearly ten minutes to guide us there. It was a scene that repeated itself throughout our stay. Whenever we were lost, whenever we needed help, someone was always glad to assist.

We saw so many beautiful things. We ate so many fantastic meals. But more than anything, I was won over by the people of Japan. That lady in the subway station. The sushi chef at the restaurant with three Michelin stars who bounded down three flights of stairs so he could see us off in the taxi after our meal. The dark-suited businessmen who bought us a round of sake at dinner in Kanazawa. These were the things that made Mrs. F and I feel welcome as strangers in a strange land, and which made our celebration of our twentieth anniversary even more special.

Over the coming weeks I will try to recap some of our best meals in Japan, several of which were among the best I've experienced anywhere. In the meantime, here are many random impressions, a few words of advice for fellow first-time travelers to Japan, a list of all the places we ate at that I can recall, and several expressions of thanks for many people whose guidance made our experience so much better.

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Cobaya Divino with Chef Julian Baker of Toscana Divino

Chefs, like actors, can get typecast. Do a certain thing well, and often enough, and people will start to think that it's all you can do. Chef Julian Baker is the chef at Toscana Divino, a restaurant in Brickell that, as the name suggests, operates in a mostly traditional Tuscan vein. Before Toscana Divino, he'd helped open Bice restaurants around the world. Though Baker's an Englishman, his resume would lead you to expect classical Italian through and through.

We like when our Cobaya events defy expectations - when chefs recognize it as an opportunity to venture outside of their, and their regular customers', comfort zones. Chef Baker did that with his Cobaya dinner, which we've been working on coordinating nearly since the restaurant first opened. Baker's culinary background happens to be much broader than the Italian cooking he's done lately, and other than a pasta course, I don't think anything he served at his dinner last week would immediately register as Italian. That's just fine by us.

From start to finish, every dish reflected a lot of thinking behind it, from concept to presentation to flavor. It was a thoughtful dinner that was also a lot of fun.

(You can see all my pictures in this Cobaya Divino flickr set).

A barrel-aged Gentleman Jack "Negroni"^[1] started the festivities, along with a few passed "bar snacks," all with clever, fun presentations. Smoked sweet potato croquette "cigars" were served in a cigar box billowing with smoke; foie gras "roll ups" wrapped in strawberry fruit leather and sprinkled with pistachios stuck up out of a field of greens planted in a box; and best of all, crispy chicharron-like beef tendon "frazzles" which emerged, still audibly crackling, from inside a false book.

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CSA Weeks 1 through 11 (a/k/a "What Happened to the CSA Posts?")

This is now my third year doing a CSA with Little River Market Garden, and while the quality of the products keeps getting better and better, the frequency of my posting on them has precipitously declined. I managed only two posts all of last season, and here we are halfway through this season, and not a single report yet.

Part of the reason, honestly, is that in our home cooking we mostly sacrifice creativity for simplicity, if not expediency. And while a simple salad or some braised greens may make for good eating, I'm not convinced it makes for exciting reading. Still, it's one of the small highlights of every weekend to pick up my bag of vegetables from Farmer Muriel every Saturday. So here is a glimpse of what I've been doing with it.

Shaved kohlrabi and turnip salad. I think kohlrabi is a vastly underappreciated vegetable. It's got a satisfying snap to its texture and a flavor that reminds of broccoli, but sweeter and less farty. So I was excited to see kohlrabi at Muriel's stand this Saturday,^[1] and then even more excited to see a recipe using it from Ignacio Mattos of New York's Estela in the latest edition of Bon Appétit. In fact, it's a dish I had at the restaurant just last month.

This winter salad combines thin-sliced root vegetables (the magazine recipe uses kohlrabi; when I had it at the restaurant, it was with turnip - I used both) and apples, dressed simply with lemon juice, zest, and vinegar, together with fresh mint, nuts (the recipe called for hazelnuts but I had none and used marcona almonds instead) and cheese (I subbed parmesan for the funkier fossa cheese Mattos uses). It's deceptively simple, pretty, and incredibly satisfying: the crunch of the root vegetables, the refreshing tartness of the apples and lemon, the umami from the cheese and nuts, a bright grace note of fresh mint.

Spicy beans and wilted greens. This recipe, with some adaptations, was from last month's Bon Appétit,^[2] and brings a motherload of umami via anchovies and parmesan rinds cooked with the beans. We used every green we had in the fridge, which included kale, Swiss chard, turnip greens and kohlrabi greens. Some variation on this theme - greens, beans or a grain, and top it with an egg - is a regular dinner staple in our house.^[3]

Backyard tomatoes with burrata, spring onions and arugula. OK, the only thing here that actually came from my weekly CSA share was the onion (and maybe the arugula) - but the tomatoes were from seedlings I bought from Little River at the start of the season. That still counts. I've got about a half-dozen tomato plants going, and the first to bear fruit were the Sungold (a small orange-hued cherry tomato packed with flavor) and the Indigo Rose (almost black-skinned with a bright red interior and a round, sweet flavor). I added one larger grocery store heirloom tomato to bulk this up some. The mint green goddess dressing was inspired by the one served at Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonette's "Toro Pizzeria" dinner at Harry's Pizzeria last month.

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