TRAVEL THE FREQUENT FLIER SILVERSEA
TRAVELIFE MAGAZINE
AN AFTERNOON
of Delight CHRISTINE CUNANAN recalls a recent meal at Kyoaji in Tokyo, one of the hardest restaurants to book in the world
In a way, snagging two seats at Kyoaji’s counter for nine was even more of a feat, because the odds of winning a lottery are probably slightly higher. Kyoaji is ranked as one of Japan’s top five restaurants, and some people consider it the hardest restaurant to book in the world.
THE PRICE ISN’T RIGHT In spite of its steep prices – Kyoaji’s lunch is perhaps the city’s most expensive, as a 12-course meal here is approximately 30 times an average lunch in Tokyo – this little restaurant is perpetually full with local diners, even amidst an ongoing recession in Japan. And, unlike many of Tokyo’s other top restaurants, which have benefited from international publicity in food guides and lists of the world’s best restaurants, Kyoaji is not quite a restaurant for foreigners, although many have tried to book it and some occasionally do manage to get a seat.
UNEXPECTED WINDFALL Kyoaji’s chef, an elderly man with smiling eyes who hobbled around on wooden clogs with a bad foot on the day we were there, reportedly turned down three stars from the Michelin Guide, you see. This snub may have inadvertently turned into a marketing coup, because he ended up with
some kind of cult status among serious foodies always on the lookout for talent – and, better yet, for talented mavericks.
IMPOSSIBLE ENTRY
Then there’s the pretty high barrier to entry here – and I’m not talking about the bill at the end of the two-and-a-half hour meal, which is enough to pay for a holiday in Bali or Cebu for two, by the way. To get your seats confirmed at Kyoaji, word has gone around that you actually need an introduction from a regular client of good standing. I never directly asked them about this, but when I contacted them to reserve, I decided not to take any chances for rejection and promptly did some due diligence among my Tokyo foodie friends for the needed introduction. Tokyo is a great and large metropolis, but within certain circles, it’s actually a small town where everyone knows each other, and a few phone calls netted me the introduction I required.
SMALL KITCHEN, BIG REPUTATION Considering all the hype surrounding it, Kyoaji itself is literally a cramped operation with an extraordinary chef-todiner ratio of approximately one per 1.5 diners. The open kitchen itself is a narrow affair with workstations on both sides, lined wall to wall with chefs as only five can work one side at any given time. Almost all the food is prepared here in real-time, too, giving diners a fascinating insight into the meticulous preparations that go into a Japanese meal worthy of three stars.
CHANGE OF HEART As for the food, I loved every single dish including two I usually never touch: a plate with two slimy sacks of shirako, which are fish sperm, served piping hot with only a slice of Japanese green lemon as seasoning; and six small river fish, grilled and then brushed with sweet sauce and sprinkled with aromatic Japanese pepper so that these were a heady mix of sensations and flavors when we popped them whole into our mouths. Kyoaji is also famous for its rice bowls at the end, topped with slices of the fresh fish of the season. That day, we were given grilled salmon, deliberately chopped up roughly so that the end result was a pretty mangle of belly, flesh and charred skin on top of piping hot white rice. It was so good I simply had to have seconds. And so did the couple seated next to me, apparently. They finished their meal ahead of us and then I overheard the gentleman– an aristocratic-looking young-ish man who seemed to know his food and his restaurants–make another booking even before they stood up from the counter. The next available date was the second week of September, he was told, and without hesitation he booked Kyoaji once more. Overhearing this prompted me to recheck the date that day, in case six months of 2015 had actually passed by without my noticing, for September seemed a very long way from January to book for a meal. But it seems not a few people are only too happy to wait (and to pay) for a such a delicious opportunity in Tokyo. n
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PHOTO BY CHRISTINE CUNANAN.
W
hen I finally got my lunch reservation at Kyoaji, a Kyoto-style restaurant that serves some of the finest traditional cuisine in Japan out of a sliver of a grey building in a very nondescript neighborhood in Shimbashi, one of Tokyo’s old geisha districts, I felt like I had just won the lottery.