Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Sasaki: Insider's Look 1 - Pre-service

I zip through the streets of Gion district on my speed bicycle and arrive at the restaurant at 3:55pm. I park the bike in the garage, change my shoes into zori slippers, grab the reservation board from the shoe closet area and head upstairs. I climb the stairs quietly, as to not awake Oyassan's - Chef's - precious nap. I put my backpack in the private dining room and turn the cell phone on silent. It's 3:58pm; I head back downstairs to the kitchen.

Ayumi-chan, one of the training cooks, has turned the lights back on in the kitchen. We say good morning to each other and chat a little. I hear the cooks stir as they awake from their 20-minute nap; they have been working since 8 am with hours of prep and lunch service before my arrival.

We exchange good morning, the standard first-time-of-the-day greeting choice for Japanese workplace no matter what time of the day it is. Terashima-san, one of the nakai like me, comes in humming an unidentifiable tune. I grab the reservation books, check slips and tonight's menu and take a seat at the counter. Oyassan comes in and we all say good morning.

The meeting starts. "Tonight we have 17 at the counter, 6 at the table and 5 upstairs." He goes over the menu. This particular evening we are serving:


1. Sea urchin and sweet shrimp wrapped in pounded baby lotus root, served with gelee made from the stock taken from the heads of sweet shrimp and sudachi juice.

2. Firfly squid (hotaruika) "pizza" with mochi dough.

3. Tender braised abalone with abalone liver sauce, steamed white asparagus and broad beans.

4. Toro and bonito sushi. Sashimi of snapper with torched skin, kuruma shrimp , live scallop and its roe tossed in sesame oil.

5. Clear broth soup with fried golden-eye snapper and burdock, shiitake, trefoil and sesame.

6. Ohmi beef roasted with salt crust and wrapped in cherry blossom leaf (picture is before it gets wrapped and crusted).

7. Junsai, cucumbers and yamaimo in light vinaigrette with pickled plum.

8. "Hot pot"-style braised sea eel and new onion with mountain ferns and peppercorn florets.

9. Rice with fresh baby sardines (shirasu), grated radish and mibuna pickles cooked in clay pot.

10. Coconut blanc-mange with mango, blueberry and white peach.


Oyassan goes over the plates for each dish. It's May. Summery glass tableware is still too early, while springtime dishes seem a little behind-the-season. Oyassan makes a mental note to purchase more tableware. He goes over the front-of-house mise-en-place: small silver spoon for the first dish, large soup spoon for the clear broth, oshibori change after the beef, small soup spoon for the hot pot and dessert silver for the final dish. He then lists where the main ingredients are from.

Tonight the sea urchin is from Rausu in Hokkaido and the sweet shrimp from Ishikawa ; the firefly squid is from Toyama ; the abalone is from Shimane and the white asparagus from Kagawa; both the toro and the bonito are from Katsu'ura in Wakayama, the snapper from Okayama, the kuruma shrimp from Ohita and the scallop from Hokkaido; the golden-eye is from Chiba's Boso area; the beef is clearly from Ohmi; the sea eel from Okayama; the baby sardines are from Shizuoka; finally, the mango is from Miyazaki.

I take notes on mise-en-place and ingredient source right on the menu for other servers. Diners do not get a written menu. The beautifully written menu pages in Oyassan's calligraphy are just for cooks and nakais.

Then, Oyassan lists off the counter seating for the night, saving the center (in front of Oyassan himself) for the best regulars. All the customers are regulars; it's extremely difficult to get a reservation otherwise. I will go into detail about hard-to-get reservation restaurants. But here, for now, let me just mention that this particular restaurant's reservation system came to be simply out of Oyassan and Okamisan (his wife) working to grow their business by making sure the repeating customers are taken care of.

"Soredewa, konban mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu!" (Loosely translated; "OK then, let's have a good service!")

The cooks get right to work adding the final touch before dinner service, torching fish, portioning vegetables, organizing plates, etc. I get the mise-en-place ready with silverware, chopsticks, napkins and post the menu in the kitchen.

Terashima-san and I go upstairs to the staff room. Soon enough Ayumi-chan brings us tea and sweets. The sweets are provided usually by gourmand customers who want Oyassan to try particularly well-known snacks from all over Japan. We sip tea and eat. Ayumi-chan being the only female cook gets to relax a bit with the two of us.

At 4:45 we change into kimonos. At first, Terashima-san pretty much dressed me from zero for a full hour. Now I can dress myself (woohoo!) in 30 minutes. Really, though, I'd say that less than 10% of Japanese women can wear a kimono by themselves. I was reassured by our sweet Okamisan to not worry about my American upbringing that never required me to learn to wear a kimono.

We head back downstairs. Freshly clad in kimonos and with retouched make-up, we say good morning to the chefs again. We set up the counter seats and the tables for service, check the restrooms, turn on the lights and, as with all high-end Japanese restaurants, cleanse the leading steps and the street in front of the restaurant with water. The glistening stones of the small path that leads up to the front entrance also get ready to welcome the guests for the evening.

Okamisan and Terashima-san stand outside, while I sit in the entry way to welcome the guests.

It's 6 pm.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Sasaki: Insider's Look - Introduction

Up to this point, I have gone to and written about Kyoto restaurants as a visitor; when I went to Hyotei back in December 2007 I was still living in the New York. My life as a Kyotoite started in February of 2008 as I finally settled down to unpack the thirteen boxes I shipped from the States, impressed that they arrived exactly within the one-hour time frame given by the Japanese moving company.

It's a funny thing - and, I think, a common thing for many people - that I stopped being so vigorous to go to restaurants since I started to actually live in Kyoto. The idea that I will not need to count the number of meals, and thus the number of reservations, according to the length of my stay has made me feel less urgent in eating at various places.

I did, however, start something no visitor to Kyoto can do; I decided to work at a kaiseki restaurant in the Gion district as a nakai, a kimono-wearing server. And not just any kaiseki restaurant in Gion; I decided to work at Sasaki.

Sasaki is famous for its dynamic counter-style kaiseki cuisine and infamous for being the restaurant with the most difficult reservation to secure in Kyoto. I have also tried to make a reservation at Sasaki every time I traveled to Kyoto. And, of course, every time it was fully booked.

Whether the decision to work there is from brilliant professionalism or gluttony is up for debate. I will be honest, however, to unabashedly disclose the following thought-process; If I can't eat there as a customer, why not work there to see its food and service? And maybe, just maybe, I'll get to taste some of the dishes (with a half-smile and eyebrows slightly raised).

I did get a close look at the food and the service. I did get to eat not only some, but most of what has been served through the seasons. Not only that, I got to meet, work with and befriend a warm group of people who made me feel at home in Kyoto.

For the next several posts I will share the insider's experience at this little special restaurant run by a magnificently caring couple.