Rice, Noodle, Fish (16 page)

The veiled light of a
ryokan
entrance

(Laura Pérez)

I count my Kyoto history in hours, a ship anchored in port for the night. I find myself constantly fighting the urge to abandon caution and good manners and breach the curtains into Kyoto's higher dimension. Reason and decorum save me the embarrassment, though; instead, late at night, I'll wander the smallest streets of the Gion in hope that one of those doors will suddenly slide open, an arm will reach out, like a Hollywood hand plunged into the frigid sea to save a sinking body, and pull me into the wondrous universe inside.

I have only a vague notion of what goes down in the house of the geisha. I imagine streams of sake poured from ancient ceramic sculptures by hands specifically designed for its dispensing. Long, electric conversations confronting the mysteries of our existence. Beautiful plates of food packed with textures and flavors unknown to the outside world. Busy hands, sweaty brows. Intellect and innuendo. When I close my eyes really tight, I see the last candle of the night casting an orange glow against the gossamer veil of a rice-paper door.

But I have no way of verifying any of these suspicions. Unless your family tree begins with a Tokugawa
bafuku
, or you have befriended the daughter of a Grand Master of Tea, your imagination will do most of the feasting in this town.

It's not all mirages, though. One afternoon, I sit in on a master tea class. Five students—two men, three women, all but one over sixty—spend hours practicing to make a smokeless charcoal fire in a hole in the tatami floor. Later, one by one they whip hot water and matcha powder into a frothy emerald cup of tea with
chasen
, bamboo tea whisks. An older woman in a purple kimono serves me one; I turn the cup three times to honor its creator, as I was taught before, then drink it down in one long gulp.
Thick, vegetal, astringent—nearly a meal on its own. There are three stages one must pass before reaching the status of master; the woman who makes my tea has spent two decades in the class and remains mired in the first stage. “I know I still have much to learn before I can move on to the next level,” she says, eyes closed, head bowed.

One early evening, with the sun dipping just below the crest of the mountains that loom over the city, I meet with Yoshihiro Murata, the head chef of Kikunoi, one of Kyoto's most venerable kaiseki institutions. Murata ranks among Japan's best-known chefs, the man behind the successful UNESCO bid to honor Japanese cuisine. We meet in a private room upstairs at his restaurant, just me and him and five people in suits from various government branches. Upon learning that I am from the United States, he offers up a small lesson on global cuisine: “Western cuisines are based on fat,” he says, “but Japanese gets its flavor from umami, which has zero calories. That's why we live longer than everyone else.”

Another day, Ken takes me to meet Setsuko Sugimoto, matriarch of one of Kyoto's ancient clans, a family that traces its roots back seventeen generations, to when the city was the center of Japan. Her home is among the oldest in Kyoto, so closely protected by the city that to rearrange a piece of furniture requires approval from multiple government offices. She serves us a traditional
obanzai
dinner, Kyoto-style home cooking:
chazuke
, steamed rice-and-tea soup, and a salad of tofu scraps speckled with dried fish. “We're starting to lose these traditions,” she says, ladling the soup from an ancient wood-fired stovetop.

But inevitably, most of the moments that aren't spent at the kaiseki counter are spent wandering—past the shops where
wagashi
artisans shape sweetened beans into works of edible art, through the temples and shrines that dot the winding Philosopher's Path, across the canal and into the evening glow of
Shirakawa Dori, a street whose beauty leaves me breathless every time I walk it.

I dream strange dreams when I am in Kyoto. One night, I am called upon by Obama to broker a trade negotiation between Japan and the United States. The next, I iron a suit jacket that stays forever wrinkled. An anxiety lies awake in me that no flower arrangement or seasonal scroll or dimly lit path can uproot. I'm not sure if it comes from the doors I can't open or the people who guard their thresholds. Maybe it's the shoes that never slip off my feet, the density of Japanese words in my mouth, the chopsticks that feel like tree branches. I cycle through metaphors, looking for one that makes sense of what I'm feeling: Kyoto is a Christmas feast, and I'm stuck at the kids' table. Or maybe Kyoto is a poem of immense but impenetrable meaning.

And yet, even after all the doubt and restlessness, all the unsettling stimuli, when I see a young
maiko
, a geisha-in-training, emerge from behind the curtains and fill a quiet street with her clomping wooden shoes, the whole world stops. My knees buckle and my palms sweat and in that second where everything grows wonderfully fuzzy I remember that this is where the story begins. That they are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

米 麺 魚

By the time we get back to Tempura Matsu, the morning market haul is in various stages of undress. In Kyoto's more renowned restaurants, ingredient transformation is a delicate act—a bit of knifework, a gentle boil, a brushstroke of soy. But at Tempura Matsu, transformation takes on a more aggressive tone.

The 3.7-kilogram snapping turtle is alive no more; its shell bobs just above the water line of a simmering stock, flavoring a dashi made with leeks, ginger, sake, and mirin. The wild boar braises in a bath of white miso studded with mountain herbs and wedges of daikon. The bamboo goes directly from the trunk of the car into a massive pot of boiling
water, the first step in a multipart process that will transform the tender bulbs into five separate dishes for the day's menu.

The restaurant employs five cooks who collectively have spent more than a century working in the Matsu kitchen. Kazuhiro Nakagawa, the youngest of the crew, handles the rice, the most straightforward but in some ways most stressful job on the line—rice must always be perfect in Japan. Hirofumi Oyagi works the tempura station, gently stirring batter with chopsticks, floating little drops into the hot oil to take its temperature. The same way an owner and his dog grow to resemble one another, Hirofumi and his pot have nearly become one over the decades, his eyes and hair cast-iron black, his face moist and craggy from forty-two years in front of the fryer.

If you sat on a stool and watched Takashi Shingu long enough, you would eventually unlock all the secrets of Japanese cooking. He skewers Wagyu and salmon and sacks of cod sperm and begins to grill them slowly over a charcoal fire. He turns pufferfish and squid into perfect dominos for sashimi. He nails a still-slithering eel to the cutting board, skins it with one swift motion, fillets it with one more, and has it cooking in a bamboo steamer splashed with sake before its muscles have stopped moving. He's been at Matsu since he was in high school, nearly four decades on the line, and he moves through the day's cooking like a man who has never wanted to do anything else.

Grilling, steaming, stewing, slicing, frying: the wheels of kaiseki turn with incredible ease and fluency at Tempura Matsu. With all the pieces in place, father and son both disappear upstairs to prepare for service. When Toshio comes back down, he's changed from his market clothes into a crisp white chef's jacket with a tiny Matsu kanji monogrammed on the left breast. Toshio's thirty years old but looks a decade younger, with boy-band good looks and a tommy-gun
laugh that makes everything sound like the funniest moment of his life.

Toshio trained under Alain Ducasse, arguably the greatest French chef cooking today. “I taught Ducasse how to cook on hot stones,” he says with a sort of sweet seriousness that dispatches any doubts you might have about the claim. “Now he's using it in all of his restaurants, but because he's so famous, people think we're the ones copying him.” When Toshio looks over at me, he seems concerned that my pen isn't moving. “Please make sure to write that down.”

Toshio also spent time in the kitchen at Kitcho, Kyoto's most renowned kaiseki temple, where dinner starts at $400 and dishes read like an edible history of Japan's ancient capital. You won't find many like him in the kitchens of this city: a young, hypertalented chef with one eye fixed on Kyoto and the other scanning the horizons of global cuisine.

Of course, Toshio's true master has always been his father. It was his father who taught him to how to bone a fish, how to fry a vegetable, how to fit two opposing flavors together. Normally the son of the owner, regardless of résumé, would be relegated to a supporting role in any Japanese kitchen—especially in Kyoto. But the father-son dynamic at Matsu is like none I've seen anywhere else in this country, one built on open collaboration, constant feedback, and a deep respect for each other's talents.

“When customers like a dish, they often ask who created it,” says Shunichi. “But we always do it together. The base comes from one of us, but the final is a collaboration.”

“Don't listen to him!” says Toshio, lining up plates for sashimi. “I came up with a dish yesterday and my dad said it was no good, but then the customers really liked it and he said he did, too. It happens all the time.” He says it with a playful smile, but you can see by the way he works the kitchen, by the way men who were cooking here before he was born follow his orders with exacting discipline, that Toshio is ready to push Kyoto cuisine forward.

(Michael Magers, lead photographer)

(Michael Magers, lead photographer)

“Kyoto is a place trying to hold on to its past,” says Shunichi. “Many of the young chefs training at the important restaurants in the city will go on to open the exact same kind of kaiseki place. Of course we're always chasing perfection, but not at the cost of new ideas. We don't change tradition; we build on top of it.”

That's where Toshio comes in, says his father. “He's the future of this place, so I need to empower him with the ability to do what he needs to do to adapt. Times change. We have different backgrounds and we combine them and that's what makes Tempura Matsu what it is.”

At 11:30 a.m., the guests begin to arrive. First, a couple from Hong Kong with their six-year-old son settle in at the countertop; then a group of four businessmen in suits are led to a private table. Later, a single woman from Tokyo and two young men from Singapore, back for their third visit, fill out the countertop.

Father and son roam freely through the kitchen, Shunichi tasting sauces and plating sashimi, Toshio buzzing from one station to the next, whisking, slicing, skewering, creating dishes on the fly. Mom and daughter work on the other side of the counter, handling reservations, recommending sake, delivering dishes to customers seated in the restaurant's quiet second floor, removed from the immediate action of the kitchen.

As I learned that first night with Ken, the Matsu service philosophy revolves around guest interaction and kitchen spectacle. “Anyone can make delicious food. It's about pleasure, having fun,” says Shunichi. “It's different when you can look a customer in the eyes, when you can see her smile.” Throughout lunch, they make jokes and ask questions and do a good bit of the cooking and plating directly on the countertop, to the wild delight of the diners.

But as service wears on, Dad begins to tire. He goes from plating and
tasting and teasing to standing in the center of the kitchen, arms folded, watching over his restaurant. Ten years ago he suffered a heart attack, losing the use of his right hand in the kitchen in the process. You'll never hear him complain, but occasionally, in a quiet moment, he speaks obliquely about the mounting health problems. When he says Toshio is the future of the restaurant, it's not a platitude; it's a forecast.

“Maybe I won't continue the way we're going,” says Toshio, when I ask him about the future of Tempura Matsu. “I don't see myself copying my father. I don't think that's the right thing to do.”