Bringing out the true character of each ingredient,
without adding unnecessary flavor.
Every ingredient has a character of its own. My work is not to turn it into my own flavor. Through the knife, through heat, and through dashi, I draw out what the ingredient already holds. The chef must never come before the ingredient. This is what Kinari Ryori means at Sassa.
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Ingredients cannot be explained
by place of origin alone.
Where was it caught or grown? Who harvested it? In what condition did it arrive? These are the things I look at before deciding on the day's cooking. I do not judge by a name or a place of origin. I look at the ingredient in front of me. From the sea, the mountains, rivers and lakes, the fields, and the rice paddies, each season sends what belongs to it.
Rather than creating a season,
I follow it.
I do not arrange ingredients to make a dish look seasonal. I use what is genuinely at its best at that moment. Spring brings bamboo shoots, flowering sansho, wild mountain vegetables, cherry sea bream, and shellfish. Summer brings ayu, eel, octopus, abalone, red sea urchin, and water shield. Autumn brings matsutake, wild mushrooms, ginkgo nuts, chestnuts, new salmon roe, and roe-bearing ayu. Winter brings crab, torafugu, wild duck, bear, turnip, and ebi-imo. Follow the ingredients of the season, and the season appears in the food on its own.
The Foundation of the Cooking
Wild ma-kombu, honkarebushi, water, and fire.
Wild ma-kombu lies at the root of Kinari Ryori. Honkarebushi is shaved immediately before the dashi is made. Water is involved in nearly every part of the cooking. Fire is decided according to the ingredient and the dish. None of them exist to come forward. They are there to support the ingredient's own character.
Training and Transmission
Keeping sight of what matters,
and carrying that spirit forward.
Training is not only a period for acquiring technique. In the work of each day, one builds the capacity to observe and to think, and gradually strengthens concentration, patience, and resolve. What I value is not the memorizing of fixed ratios and procedures, but becoming able to look at an ingredient and judge the day's balance for oneself.
Restaurant and Reservations
Japanese Cuisine Sassa
Tokyo, Hiroo
By reservation only. Eight counter seats, two private rooms.
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