No biting the personnel

IMG_0634Originally uploaded by Fizzz.

On Monday evening while in Takayama (map) we had dinner at Kakusho, a restaurant that has been in the same family for more than 200 years. It was recommended to us by an acquaintance in Seattle. Since they’re outside of downtown we would never had discovered this restaurant otherwise. From the look on their face, we think they don’t get many tourists.

The setting was incredible; certainly the most surreal we’ve seen yet in our trip across Japan. We sat in a 6 ½ sheet tatami room with a 1 tatami wide corridor all around it. This room was in a small wing of the main building across the garden. We could see into this private garden on 3 sides. The room was sparsely yet elegantly decorated with a hanging scroll and a vase with a flower. S took some pictures which you can see here.

We asked for their house specialty set menu which came as a series of small vegetarian dishes (albeit with fish stock and bonito flakes). Each brought out the distinctive flavor of their ingredients: locally grown mountain vegetables. S really liked the zarusoba dish and the rice potage. I especially enjoyed a tempura dish of special miso paste stuffed in some dried vegetable; the concoction takes 6 month to prepare. I also loved a dish of beans (maybe kidney beans) in a light sugar sauce. The sake they chose for us went really went with all the dishes.

We seemed to be the only guests that evening. One of the staff people, possibly the owner, regularly alternated with the waitress bringing in the dishes. She spoke English well enough to convey the arrangement and preparation of each dish to us. She was honored to host us.

We’re so happy we got to go.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Travel, Asia 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.