Premium Kaiseki Ryori — Multi-Course Japanese Haute Cuisine

Chef Watanabe places a ceramic bowl in front of me — matte black glaze, irregular rim, clearly handmade. Inside: three slivers of tai (sea bream) arranged over shaved ice that's been molded to resemble ocean waves. Beneath the fish, a teaspoon of grated yuzu zest. A single shiso leaf, placed off-center. 'The tai arrived this morning from Akashi Strait,' he says in careful English. 'The current there is strong, so the fish develop firm flesh.' He gestures: eat the fish alone first, then with the yuzu. The fish tastes clean and faintly sweet. The yuzu adds a citrus sharpness that makes my mouth water. The entire dish is three bites and cost roughly ¥3,000 of my ¥22,000 dinner. I have 11 courses remaining.

Two hours later, I've eaten matsutake mushroom soup served in a lacquered bowl worth more than my flight to Japan, grilled ayu (sweetfish) so fresh its skin crackled when Watanabe salted it 90 seconds before serving, and rice cooked in an earthenware pot with sea urchin that arrivedtoday from Hokkaido. My chopsticks have touched nine different ceramic pieces — Watanabe collects them from potters he knows personally. He chooses vessels to complement each dish's color and texture. The ayu, with its silver skin, came on a dark blue plate with a single hand-painted pine tree. The aesthetic coherence is exhausting. This isn't dinner. It's an argument that food can be art, and the argument is convincing.