In addition to well-known examples such as tempura, yōshoku is a self-reflexive optic of a Japanese observing himself cooking Western dishes. I have thus far had only mild interest in Western-influenced restaurants in Japan, until I visited a few ingredient-driven temples over the past 12 months: Kawamura, the 7-seat counter restaurant specializing in wagyu and abalone; Comptoir Feu, a creative kappo restaurant in Osaka; and CHIUnE, which references other cuisines such as Piemonte for its consommé and China for its sublime shaoxing ice cream. Technically, the latter two restaurants are not yōshoku per se, as they do not rehearse the staples of the repertoire (hamburg steak, curry rice, et al.), whereas Kawamura san mainly cooks within these parameters. Normally yōshoku as a genre does not prioritize the ingredient foremost but rather the established codes of the dish. Kawamura is thus an exception in sourcing premium ingredients for the familiar repertoire. Gastroville former contributor Mikael Jonnson was among the first to expose the qualities of Kawamura’s wagyu to the anglophone world. It bears adding to Mikael’s account that Kawamura is probably the highest elevation of a yōshoku restaurant.

With pronouncements vouching for Michelin’s “unrivaled integrity, independence, and expertise”, the Director of Visit California was apparently unaware of, wasn’t in a position to know about, or chose to ignore, events in Michelin’s recent history that created the transformation of the Michelin Guides from an unbiased source of rectitude, inscrutability, deliberateness, and discretion to one that has refashioned itself in the digital age by engaging in commercial ventures and activities as the sales of its guidebooks have fallen.

The term “Nouvelle Cuisine” is not as new as one might think. Marin codified 18th-century French cuisine, while Menon (pseudonym) vulgarized it, but in return helped to create a broader base. Generations of cooks learned from no less than 200 years ago by studying the “Cuisinière Bourgeoise”, first published in 1746.  Both chefs, Marin and Menon, created a founding legend of cooking styles with the catchy formula “Nouvelle Cuisine”, which subsequent generations of chefs would use to promote and market their own style. Throughout the centuries, cookbook authors have judged the “old cooking” of their direct predecessors as “gothic,” “complicated,” and “heavy.” 

A recent reading of Alexis Papazoglou’s article “The Sociality of Wine” in Gastromondiale left me with a warm feeling. It recalled many convivial dinners I have shared with oenophilic friends, who are not always as easily accessible depending on my whereabouts. While I found the tone warming, not unlike a good Amarone, I had the nagging feeling that his panegyric towards the sociality of wine endowed his “solipsistic” wine drinker with a flimsy coat. The concepts of sociality and “the social” were also conflated, so that I was not certain when one was invoked to buttress the case for the other.

Greek wine might be experiencing global recognition in the past 30 years or so, increasingly finding its way into wine menus of revered restaurants and on the shelves of prestigious wine retailers, but wine in Greece has been made for thousands of years, leaving behind a legacy of numerous grape varieties indigenous to the area. Greek wine modernism therefore could not simply be excellent Viogniers and Cabernet blends. It would have to be something within which this long tradition is detectable, but also transformed into something new.

Nothing has shaped my thinking and preferences in ambitious restaurant dining more than Restaurant Alain Chapel. It was thus an "isn’t it a small world" moment when dining at Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare I encountered the sommelier David Chapel, the first son of Alain Chapel, who told me about his wife Michele Smith who worked at this restaurant and Per Se, as well as their new wine-making venture that is unfolding in the Beaujolais region. I am joined in the interview of Michele by Vedat Milor and Alexis Papazoglou.