Obsession is a necessity for Michelin-starred chefs. Nobody survives in a gruelling industry that robs you of your social life, rises above fierce competition and delivers perfection night after night without a bit of mania over what they do. In my reading about Japanese culture in advance of our trip later this year, I've seen something similar. The gardeners who groom every leaf on a tree to a painterly perfection, the generations of swordsmiths who hand down and hone their skills to create the ideal samurai blade, the calligraphers who strive for years to get a character just right ... there's plenty of obsession on display.
I began to suspect that fine dining and Japanese food would be an eminently logical match. An evening at Mayfair's Umu validates that suspicion.
Head Chef Yoshinori Ishii does more than deliver exceptional food. He matches a range of pottery (some of which he's designed) and lacquerware to the food and its position in the parade of dishes to make a visual statement. His biography tells us he's also a keen calligrapher, so no surprise that one of the courses is served on top of a poem, written in bold calligraphy by Yoshinori, illustrated by his own drawings. If that sashimi tastes fresher than any you've ever tasted, thank his love of fishing in the traditional Japanese style. Not only has he found his own Cornish suppliers; he's taught them the art of ikejime ... dispatching a fish quickly with a needle into the nervous system, curtailing the fright and struggle that releases meat-toughening hormones and acids. When that fish comes to you as a hand roll, it's presented by a Yoshinori-designed wire arm, symbolically from his touch direct to yours.
Umu specialises in kaiseki, the highly-ritualised, multi-course gourmet tradition of Kyoto. The biggest splurge during our upcoming trip involves an exclusive ryokan (inn) in the hills above the ancient capital where our courses will be brought to our rush-matted, paper-screen-walled room by our kimono-clad hosts. Before diving in at the deep end in a language we don't understand, I thought it made sense to get familiar with kaiseki on home turf. It was also my husband's birthday; a two-Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant was suitably celebratory. (And the price of a full kaiseki meal definitely needs to be reserved for a special occasion.)
Our eight course (but nine dish; one course had two parts) celebration started with "mukozuke." From what my post-meal research tells me, this is the word for a small, intriguing snack served in or on an interesting piece of pottery, often with a rough but beautiful finish and some kind of artful deformity. Here, a battleship grey bowl with a slightly pitted surface and a slightly shiny glaze would have been a perfect circle had the potter not bent one side in, forming a shape like an apostrophe. It was a quirky and beautiful piece that demanded inspection before you ever paid attention to the food. Inside was a lovely melange of gently-cured sea trout, wafer thin slices of turnip, pickles and caviar. Two generous bites or four dainty ones, it was an elegant foreshadowing of all to come.
"Nimonowan" is a simmered dish or soup cup, here titled "Ocean Breeze" and served in an exquisite lacquer bowl with lid that you remove to create your own little tabletop drama. Inside, a layered disc of Cornish lobster, abalone and nori seaweed sat in a broth so clear it almost disappeared. Later, we both agreed that the menu probably had one course more than it really needed, and this is the dish my husband would cut. He's never been a fan of lobster and thought the example here was slightly overcooked and too chewy. (Which is what he almost always says about any lobster.) I suspect the chewiness was the abalone. Whatever the truth, it was still one of the most exquisite interpretations of soup I've ever had and very tasty.
The next course was the double dish. "Tsukuri" is the set up to executing a Judo throw. One assumes that implies a partnership with the course to come, or maybe the first plate set up the second, but nobody told us. My only real complaint with Umu was that the serving staff (entirely European, heavy on Italians) doesn't really give you much information on your food beyond the basics, even though they knew we were interested. Many Michelin-starred places will go into detail about their supply chain, the inspiration behind the dish or even how you're supposed to eat something. We could have used more of that in this delightful, but very alien, environment. It seems that's simply not their style.
Tsukuri started with slices of raw turbot. People often claim "you can read through it" when describing how thinly they've sliced something. Yoshinori plays with that idea by serving the slices on top of a poem he's written about the joy of food. Unless you can actually read Japanese characters, you can't test the "read through" claim completely, but it's a fun touch. Delicious as the turbot was, the highlight here was my first taste of real wasabi. The stuff you get in almost all sushi restaurants is an industrially-produced approximation made from horseradish, mustard and food colouring. Real wasabi is a root, notoriously difficult to grow, that releases a piquant kick when grated that fades within minutes. Obviously, most restaurants don't want to dabble with an ingredient with
no shelf life after preparation, even if it doesn't cost £22 for a thumb-sized piece. The taste of the real thing, grated into a paste by moving in a circle on a piece of shark skin, is a mind-blowing blend of sweet and hot.
The sauces and the wasabi stayed around for part two: sashimi. This is probably the ultimate expression of the idea that the best ingredients don't need much done to them. Five pieces of top quality fish, incredibly fresh, taken from the best part of the fillet. I've had a lot of great sushi in my life, but the only time I've come close to this freshness was when we tried slivers of the
fish we'd just caught off Puerto Rico before we left the boat. When fish is this fresh, it's almost a crime to cook it. And every kind tasted significantly different from the other. (Something, let's face it, you don't really get at Itsu.) The most fascinating morsels here were the back and belly tuna, side by side. Belly is a rare delicacy, and I've had it before ... but never this rich or pungent. We're talking the foie gras of the piscine world here. Honestly, the flavour was too much for me; I could have happily substituted another bite of back, but am glad I tried it.
Next came my dish of the day. "Agemono" means deep fried food in Japanese, and I suspect we were into the comfort food section of the menu. The description was sweetcorn three ways. I am from a corn state. I have an annual moan about the poor quality of the corn in the UK while I indulge in memories of buying sacks full fresh ears from the fields down the road from my childhood home and eating them before they'd been off the stalks for four hours. As glorious as those Missouri memories are, they couldn't touch the expressions of that noble vegetable here. There was a kernel-stuffed spring roll, a quarter of a grilled cob and a croquette I can only describe as deep fried creamed corn. We may have been in a Japanese restaurant, but it's as if the chef had distilled the essence of the best of an American midwestern summer onto a plate. I almost wept with joy. And if that wasn't enough, you unrolled the husk to find a line of perfectly popped and seasoned corn. Four ways! And each perfect.
"Hiyashimono" followed: smoked and cured mackerel with somen noodles and Japanese ginger. I couldn't find a translation for this title, but this was my husband's favourite dish. I suspect he was experiencing a similar cross-cultural childhood flashback, given how essential mackerel is to Danish cuisine. It is, however, the dish I would cut. Not that I didn't like it: the mash-up of sashimi and cold noodle salad would be a huge hit with me for a summer lunch. But at this point I'd reached satisfaction point on the raw fish and didn't need more.
"Yakimono" means grilled or pan fried and brought us out of the ocean for the first and only land-based meat dish: lamb two ways, with accompanying sweetbreads. Regular readers will know I'm not keen on lamb or offal, though I'll soldier through anything on a chef's tasting menu. (Which is how I got
familiar with sweetbreads in the Loire Valley.) A benefit of the Japanese love of bite-sized morsels is that anything's tolerable this small. In fact, the rump and fillet were both rare and delicately spiced, avoiding the lamb-y flavours I dislike. This bit of sweetbread was more solid, chewy and unadorned than the heavily sauced French version. Not bad, but still not anything I'd order for myself.
Kaiseki traditionally ends with a bit of white rice, which explains the seemingly odd appearance of sushi hand rolls as the final savoury dish. The menu delivers up two per person which is, frankly, more than even the biggest appetites need at this point. But the options are so tempting it was a relief not to have to choose just between the smoked eel and the tuna. This was the dish that came out held aloft by the wire hand, or "gohan".
While I love Japanese food, I remain sceptical about the cuisine's ability to deliver on the dessert front. Umu didn't change my mind. Their offerings were beautiful ... we actually had two since my husband's tomato allergy precluded the dish included in the kaiseki ... but a bit too experimental for satisfaction. Both had vegetal elements, which I always find difficult in dessert. As a work of art, however, "ajisai", or hydrangea, was a wonder. Tiny cubes of blue and pink jelly, coloured naturally by butterfly pea flower and pink amber tomato, covered a mound of sweet white bean puree. This looked remarkably like a hydrangea flower head, with a smooth, creamy and mildly floral taste. Unfortunately the shiso sorbet beside it didn't work for me. Even though shiso is related to mint, it was too much like having a salad on the plate with my pudding.
I thought my husband's dish was more successful: mango with a panna cotta-like cream and a caramel sauce. The experimental element here came with more wasabi, served as a whole root as a side with the grater. You were supposed to grate your own and add it to the sweet for a flavour contrast. It was a bit like putting pepper with strawberries and worked to an extent, but my husband found it tough to get the wasabi / mango balance right.
As usual with a blow-out tasting menu, we went with the matching wine flight. Except that at Umu, a sake flight is an option. That seemed too experimental for my husband, so he stuck with the grapes while I threw caution to the wind with fermented rice. I was the clear winner.
By course three it was obvious that sake in your bog standard Japanese is restaurant is to the good stuff what a wino's rotgut is to Burgundy or Bordeaux. Every glass was balanced and nuanced, with a range of subtle tastes. Most, in a blind tasting, could easily have passed for wine. And unlike my husband's selections, mine came with a fascinating array of cups, from rough pottery to cut glass to fine porcelain that looked like a sea urchin. I learned from our sommelier (who got more chatty once we determined that he was from a Sicilian village in the same mountain range where my grandfather was born) that though rice has some aspect of "terroir", variations in sake flavour have much more to do with yeasts, fermenting processes and production decisions. The variety was exceptional, from a bone-dry, almost mushroomy offering to a slightly effervescent lemon treat that was like limoncello re-invented for sophisticated grown ups.
Most two-starred restaurants tend to steer everyone to the tasting menu, and if they have a la carte it's often more expensive than the chef's choice. That's actually not the case at Umu. You could pop in here at short notice, grab a seat at the sushi bar and get a couple of dishes and a glass or two of sake for something that approximates the cost of an average meal elsewhere in Mayfair. Not cheap, but a lot less than the full blow out.
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