A Most Unusual Meal -- Everything is Fermented. Everything.
Last night, we dined at a restaurant that felt like it belongs in Appalachia, or maybe on a sound stage at Saturday Night Live, where they are doing a skit to mock alternative dining solutions and lifestyles in this age of individualized dining options.
Picture this: at Tsuji-que restaurant, in Tokyo, the bare-footed chef wears a canvas apron that looks like it has not been washed since the Middle Ages. Or maybe the chef was out doing blacksmith rounds before meal service?
The wait staff are barefooted too, and the restaurant is so filled with smoke upon our arrival that a guest at the bar suggested we let the staff place our coats and jackets in a safe place to prevent them from smelling like smoke when we leave.
Upon our arrival, the dining room has so much smoke in it — visibly fogging the place — that it resembles one of those airport smoking rooms you find in Europe, or Asia, where they cram as many people as possible into a room the size of a Motel 6 bathroom and let ‘em all light up. It was THAT kind of smokiness at Tsuji-que.
Even the concept of the place is weird by western terms — it is one of the very few restaurants in all of Japan that specializes in FERMENTED FOOD. Everything served during our 15-course, omakase-style dinner was fermented. The soups, salads, meats, fish, the spices, the sauces, the vegetables.
Dinner was a succession of chef’s choice morsels, each course served in, our on, different chinaware, each course accompanied by a different wine, sake, or unknown libation.
Everything served at dinner was, pretty much, made onsite, including the koji, or rice malt, used to kickstart fermentation in other foods.
They even super-filter the water used to make soups, stock, or to be served for drinking; the water is filtered through a mineral called shungite, to return it to its natural, “lively” state, of….um, er…. water
Rather than offer descriptions of each of our many courses, I will let photos of some of our dinner highlights speak for themselves.
We sat on stools at a long community bar with ten seats — Tsuji-que fills the seats once per night and then the staff most likely put on their shoes and go home. Or maybe they leave barefoot… and find a nearby bridge to sleep under, which would be in keeping with their theme of all-natural and a return to nature.
I really liked the dinner. The setting, while not comfortable, was one-of-a-kind, reminding me of many meals I have eaten in unusual, Anthony Bourdain-like, settings — in remote Chinese villages when I travelled incognito for 30 days reviewing the regional cuisines of China.
Tsuji-que is located at 1 Chome-9-3 Nakane, Meguro City, Tokyo 152-0031.
Reservations required. Web site:
https://tsuji-que.amebaownd.com but you’ll need someone who reads Japanese. I can’t find a button to switch text to English.
More to come — when we’re hungry again.
Jim