tables into their own private worlds.
zashiki (dining room floor) The mere act of removing one's shoes and sitting on the floor to dine stimulates the senses for the Japanese. The zashiki, the floor dining room, provides the perfect ambience for sharing a hot pot or drinking sake.
chashitsu (tearoom) The spirit of my architectural perspective is based on the philosophy of the tea ceremony school. In fact, there is an actual tea room (chashitsu), in one of our restaurants, which consolidates this architectural concept into a single unit of space.
Dishware plays a significant role in the presentation of food at Shunju. By sourcing craftsmen skilled in lacquer, bamboo, ceramic and metal work, we have, over the years, designed and developed our own original dishware.
We also practice an aestheticism, mitatate, in the tea ceremony—a creative technique of employing completely unexpected things as vessels: glass bottles sliced near the bottom as small glass bowls; the lids of Korean kimchi pots as large platters; metal rakes for leveling ash heated over the grill to serve a sizzling chicken dish.
Recycling traditional ware is also a kind of mitatate, such as uncovering the long unused lacquerware sets, traditionally given to the bride by her parents as part of her dowry, and relacquering them in a luscious matte lacquer (kodaishu) —the wonderful rebirth of a new ware is thus witnessed.
The Shunju way of hospitality, motenashi, is illustrated when our waiting staff pick the meat out of a crab leg or divide a dish into individual portions for our diners. opposite The spirit of Sugimoto's architectural perspective is vividly expressed in his interpretation of the chashitsu, tearoom, in the Toriizaka restaurant. Diners sit on the tatami, flooring woven from rush, and lacquered trays serve as individual dining tables in the tradition of cha kaiseki, the meal served in the tea ceremony. The small entrance at the back, nejiriguchi, is in the traditional scale designed to lower one's posture when entering the tearoom.
We pray that the tradition of Japanese crafts will continue and thrive and, by continuing to work with these artists and artisans, we believe that we can play a small role in supporting these crafts. We also like to mix various dishware and utensils from other Asian cultures such as Korea, Java, and Vietnam. Some are used as is while others are refinished in Japan. Some are contemporary craftworks, others are period pieces from the Yi Dynasty in Korea or the Edo Period in Japan. All have been carefully selected with the same eye and collectively they express the Shunju style.
hospitality The Shunju way of hospitality— motenashi—is to ensure guests' satisfaction is complete by offering them as much information about the food as possible. Taste is not simply a sensory matter for the human palate, but is the memory of an experience that also includes that moment in time and environment. Conjure up memories of savoring the fish you caught at the river or the wild mushrooms you gathered in the forest and you'll understand what we mean.
Therefore, we feel that is inadequate to simply serve fine ingredients: it is important also to pass on the background of the ingredients for true enjoyment of our dishes. Not only should the chefs be aware of who produces a certain vegetable, where a fish is caught, or how a wild fungus is gathered, but also the consumer. To this end, we provide information about our ingredients and producers in our menus.
Our regular guests are so well-informed they will ask us when the sweetfish (ayu) will arrive from Shimanto River, or if the tomato being served is from Yamazaki Farm. The interest focuses on the ingredient, and encompasses much more than the limited confines of the platter. Our menu books account for many interesting conversations at the dining table.
food for all seasons
Shunju's cuisine begins with the pursuit of the finest ingredients and seasonings available to us. Energetic vegetables free of chemicals grown from seeds harvested from organic crop, free-range chickens which roam the foothills of mountains, soy sauce made from spring water and aged in wooden barrels, sea salt which has been dried by the strong, tropical Okinawan sun, the list is endless.
Our philosophy is to present these ingredients in their purest form. Japan is blessed with four distinctive seasons—we have been bestowed with a lavish variety of food materials and the luxury to savor the best of what each season has to offer, traditionally referred to as shun in Japanese. We believe that in order to present this shun in its finest form, cooking methods should be kept simple. When we serve shun vegetables raw as an appetizer, they are often neither cut nor torn but, rather, served whole with some sea salt and a miso dip. Guests are delighted to bite into vegetables which were plucked from the fields that very morning.
The most important element in Shunju's cuisine is to be able to truly appreciate the four seasons and the abundant blessings which mother nature has bestowed upon us. Ultimately, this is what we consider to be the new Japanese cuisine.
The tomato freshly plucked from the fields in the early morning, still glistening with morning dew, is far more delicious than the salad you find in a restaurant. The fisherman's breakfast of freshly caught sashimi on board the boat stirs a greater appetite than the refined fish dish at a well-established kaiseki restaurant. There are times when the simple act of procuring one's own food is the ultimate gastronomic experience. The more realistic the experience of knowing what and how one is eating, the better it tastes.
At Shunju, we strive to serve the seasons and regional climates instead of culinary expertise or vanity. The interest focuses on the ingredient, and extends to a realm much greater than that of the limited confines of the platter.
If we are really searching the truth about vegetables, we should first seek knowledge about the soil, for the truth about fish, we should seek knowledge of the fishing ports. So we embark upon our journey leaving behind the pots and pans and travel throughout Japan to discover unknown food materials and regional cuisine that has been passed down for generations.
One of the first things we discover on these journeys is that the talk of the trade is truly superficial. The undiluted voice of the real producers, the farmers and fishermen, is the most relevant source of our education and inspiration.
Shunju's cuisine is supported by a countless number of regional producers. The people that we have encountered on our journeys have become our marketplace. Wonderfully fresh ingredients arrive on a daily basis, and our chefs 7 only task is to face them in a sincere manner and recognize a dish befitting them.
Bamboo lanterns (far left) stake out the paths through the trees to the utage (forest banquet). A noren —a traditional Japanese curtain which marks an entrance—serves as the doorway to the utage site (second from left). Onions and sato imo (taro potatoes), grill on a charcoal pit (second from
