Kaiseki: The Exquisite Cuisine of Kyoto’s Kikunoi Restaurant

Many years ago, Japanese monks in training would carry a heated stone inside their robes, using its warmth to ward away hunger pangs. It was a practice known as kaiseki — and the Japanese word, over time, began to describe light meals.

Photographs by Masahi Kuma

It is an art form that is highlighted in Yoshihiro Murata’s cookbook, Kaiseki: The Exquisite Cuisine of Kyoto’s Kikunoi Restaurant. He explains both the history of kaiseki and his contentious journey to becoming a chef of Japanese cuisine.

He shocked his father, a famous Japanese chef, by moving to France to learn how to cook French cuisine — and, later, he faced his father’s wrath when he had a change of heart and returned to Japan after six months to become a Japanese chef.

Although he still bears the scars of his father’s passion, he also exudes that same passion. His cookbook is full of a collection of carefully formed recipes and photographs of artfully presented dishes.

Murata celebrates the natural ingredients of each season with 20 dishes representing the flavors of spring, summer, autumn and winter. For him, the dish has to be equally beautiful and delicious. It is obvious that he cooks with love, technical skill and passion.

He crafts Hidden Ume, a pickled plum dish coated with sea bream milt, toasted ground sesame seeds and horsetail shoots. The white milt of the sea bream smoothly flows over the top of the plum in a celebration of spring.

In the summer, he offers a chilled summer vegetable dish complete with Japanese eggplant, a winter melon, a pumpkin, young lotus root, burdock root, Tanaka chili peppers and green nyuzu. In the photograph, the dish is a melody of colors — yellow, green, white and a streak of blue.

November Hassun, a sweet rice dumpling, jumps artistically off a white napkin, contrasting sharply against the black backdrop.

December’s Hassun is inspired by delicate pink sazanka flowers. The fresh sushi — Camellia sushi, dried mullet roe rolled with squid and cod roe — is decorated with tiny, bright petals.

The dishes exude warmth and the colors of the season and, perhaps, that is why Murata describes his dishes as “eating the seasons.”

Yoshihiro Murata

Yoshihiro Murata is a third-generation owner and chef of Kikunoi, the Kyoto kaiseki restaurant with a branch in Tokyo. He is also the author of several books. This is the first one to be published in English.

Photographer Masashi Kuma’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including Voce and GQ.