Japanese culinary adventure in both Japan and USA.
One of our favorite activities in Japan is to stay at a hot spring resort and Kinosaki in Hyogo was one of our most memorable. It is a charming and quaint little town surrounded by rural mountains and the sea. It is one of those places in Japan that make you feel like you were transported back in time to a different era.
Continue reading “Tabemono Itinerary – Sakura Season in Kinosaki”
In a parallel post, I mentioned one of our favorite places to visit in our past travels to Japan was Kinosaki. It is a charming and quaint little town surrounded by rural mountains and the sea. It is one of those places in Japan that make you feel like you were transported back in time to a different era. During our stay at Kinosaki, we booked our overnight stay at Nishimuraya Honkan ryokan.
My wife and I visited Japan in May 2018 to celebrate our wedding anniversary and our first stop for dinner was to Takazawa. Takazawa is a restaurant that is surrounded by the allure of exclusivity and secrecy. Seating only three tables and a maximum of ten guests a night, Takazawa serves fusion Japanese cuisine with a splash of molecular gastronomy. Chef Yoshiaki Takazawa originally opened his restaurant in 2005 and it was originally called Aronia de Takazawa. It was named after a little known fruit in Japan similar to a native American blueberry, but it was changed in 2012 to simply Takazawa. From their website, the name change was done to highlight the evolution of Chef Takazawa’s culinary point of view, where he focuses more on Japanese tableware, ingredients, techniques, and flavors. He prefers to call his style of cuisine simply Takazawa style, and it is definitely a unique experience from both a culinary perspective as well as how the overall dinner was orchestrated. Continue reading “Tabemono in Tokyo – Takazawa”
I first heard of Narisawa on an episode of NHK’s series “Begin Japanology”. The episode highlighted Chef Yoshirhiro Narisawa’s career and life story in cooking and his unique culinary point of view called “Innovative Satoyama” caught my attention as its focus is about bringing nature to the plate. Chef Narisawa defines a satoyama as a civilization that lives near forests and oceans and lives in harmony with nature. On his menu, he fully explains the significance of Satoyama, which quotes: Continue reading “Tabemono in Tokyo – Narisawa”
The port town of Hakodate, which is Hokkaido’s third largest city, wraps up our final destination of Japan’s northern most island. Hakodate was Japan’s first port city that was opened to foreign trade in 1854, after years of Japan’s era of isolation. As such the city has experienced multiple foreign influences that shaped its town landscape, food, and culture. Many of the buildings stayed intact since the 1800s and are some of the primary attractions of the city. Continue reading “Tabemono Summer Vacation- Hokkaido/Tohoku 2016 Day 9-10 – Hakodate”
