Tokyo’s masters of the art of food

Three Tokyo food identities have forged international reputations.

Yakitori master Yoshiteru Ikegawa. Picture: Rice Noodle Fish by Matt Goulding.

Ginza is the heart of Tokyo’s sushi culture, making it the centre of Japan’s sushi culture, making it the greatest neighbourhood in the world for eating fish. Walk these gilded streets for a few blocks and you’ll soon figure out why. This is one of Japan’s wealthiest areas, home to extravagant department stores and a battery of international luxury brands housed in beautiful buildings created by famous architects.

Sushi as we know it today was bred in these blocks. Japanese cooks had been cycling through various permutations of narezushi, fish fermented with cooked rice, since the eighth century, but it wasn’t until the early 1800s, as Edo (Tokyo’s original name) was taking shape as Japan’s new capital, that the familiar nigiri formulation emerged.

Wooden yatai, street food stands, dotted this area, serving urban dwellers the best of the day’s catch from Tokyo Bay. Cooks shaped warm mounds of rice by hand, covered them with a slice of fresh fish, and served individual pieces directly to hungry customers. To mimic the puckering flavour of the fermented fish of yore, sidewalk chefs added vinegar to the rice; to kill off potential toxins, they rubbed the fish with a dab of grated horseradish; to season it, a few drops of soy. Modern sushi — edomaezushi — was born.

Today, in an eight-block radius you will find the finest sushi bars on earth, a concentrated cluster of polished countertops with claim to 16 Michelin stars among them.

On the third floor of an office building, a master, or shokunin, the one some have dubbed the soul of Tokyo sushi culture, stands behind a two-tiered hickory countertop, rubbing a root of fresh wasabi against a sharkskin grater, preparing for his guests. He’s young by sushi standards, 40 or so, with thick arms, shaved head, and heavy eyes that do most of the talking.

I first met Koji Sawada in 2011, when I took a seat at his counter. The meal I had was a clear indication that a pathway to perfection existed, a stairway to heaven, and that Sawada was climbing it. He is a former trucker who turned to sushi relatively late but with all the energy and determination of a man possessed by a single idea — to create the best Edo-style sushi experience in the beating heart of sushi’s birthplace.

That means starting each day at 6am at Tsukiji market, buying each individual piece of fish from the purveyor who knows the species best. That means investing years in developing a system to serve rice at its ideal temperature and texture the moment the customers settle into their seats. That means constructing an elaborate and expensive refrigeration system cooled not by electricity but by giant blocks of ice. That means serving only six people for lunch and six for dinner. That means ending each night with a terry-cloth towel, scrubbing the hinoki countertop until his arms are sore and his head is slick with sweat, completing an 18-hour day that he and his wife repeat six days a week. When I ask Sawada why he doesn’t hire someone to clean after dinner service so that he might rest, he squints his eyes, cocks his head, and points towards the entrance. “You see the name on that door? It says Sawada. I’m Sawada. She’s Sawada. Nobody else.”

Not far from Sawada, there is a small, quiet cafe where you can drink a cup of coffee from 1954. Japan may claim one of the world’s great tea cultures, but it’s no stranger to the coffee bean. Coffee arrived in the country in the 18th century, piled high in the bellies of Dutch trading ships. It went relatively unnoticed by most Japanese until, in the early 20th century, the Brazilian government began sending free coffee beans to Tokyo shop owners. By the 1930s you could find 3000 kissaten (called kissa for short), traditional Japanese coffee shops, offering Tokyoites a current of caffeine and a respite from city life.

Ichiro Sekiguchi opened Cafe de l’Ambre in Ginza in 1948, brewing five-year-old beans from Sumatra. What was born out of post-war necessity turned into a ground-breaking technique. “The coffee had a rich, full taste, like good wine.”

L’Ambre offers a wide selection of vintages: 93 Brazil, 76 Mexico, and, the oldest, a Colombian bean from 1954. “Coffee beans are breathing,” says Ichiro. “They evolve and develop different flavours over time.” At 101 years old, Ichiro shows up to work every day to toast his ancient beans.

Yoshiteru Ikegawa knew that he wanted to cook chicken before he left first grade. “At home we ate yakitori, but like most people in Japan we did it over gas in a small kitchen. But I’ll never forget the smell of charcoal when my parents first took me to a real yakitori.” Despite the early revelation, Ikegawa didn’t do what most budding shokunin do. He didn’t begin to slaughter chickens as a boy; study their musculature and temperament in obscure texts found in dark library corners; he didn’t apprentice under a yakitori chef — at least not at first. Instead, he became a salaryman. It was part of his master plan.

“Most shokunin spend their entire lives in kitchens, never learning how to work with people,” says Ikegawa. “I knew early on that dealing with the customer is one of the most important parts of being a master, so I started with that.”

When he felt the business world had taught him the subtleties of customer service. He left the suit behind and took up an apprenticeship at Toriyoshi, an elegant yakitori bar in Naka-Meguro, where he trained for seven years, studying the bible of the flame-grilled bird. In 2007 he opened Torishiki next to Meguro Station, a lovely restaurant with a U-shaped bar centred on a small iron grill. His wife glides around the room in a kimono, dispensing drinks and good vibes to happy guests. The master himself stands at attention behind the fire, the spitting image of a shokunin: chiselled features, warrior stance, a white bandanna tied around his clean-shaven head.

Yakitori, like all great food in Japan, is both perfectly simple and infinitely complex. It is chicken on a stick grilled over an open flame. The lack of variables puts more pressure and scrutiny on the few factors individuals can control: the source and intensity of the flame; the provenance of the chicken; the butchering, seasoning, and, above all, careful cooking of its flesh.

What separates Ikegawa from other serious yakitori, what has earned him a Michelin star and keeps his reservation book filled six months in advance, is the amount of care he puts into every last piece of flesh that meets his fire. He tinkers with each skewer as if it’s the last piece of meat he’ll ever cook, twisting, brushing, dipping, timing, tweaking — employing tight bits of motion to tease out the purest expression of each piece. Ikegawa embodies the qualities that all shokunin share: unwavering focus, economy of motion, disarming humility, and a studied silence that never betrays the inner orchestra his life’s work inspires.

This is an edited extract from Rice Noodle Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan’s Food Culture by Matt Goulding (Hardie Grant, $45).

Checklist

Sushi Sawada is on the third floor of MC Building, 5-9-19 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo; open for lunch and dinner, closed Mondays. It is rated two stars by the Tokyo Michelin Guide. More: [phone]. Cafe de l’Ambre is at 9-10-15 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo. Torishiki is at 2-14-12 Kamiosaki, Shinagawa, Tokyo; open for dinner seven days. It is rated one star by Michelin; More: [phone].