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标题: A Kaiseki Restaurant in Los Angeles [打印本页]

作者: choi 时间: 3-9-2019 13:11
标题: A Kaiseki Restaurant in Los Angeles
Helen Rosner, A Season for Everything; How Niki Nakayama's kaiseki restaurant became a highly coveted reservation in LA. New Yorker, Mar 11, 2019 (online publication Mar 4).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazi ... ate-cuisine-her-own

Note:
(1) "In 1965, the legendary Lyonnais chef Paul Bocuse, who had just earned his third Michelin star, travelled to Japan. In Osaka, he met with Shizuo TSUJI 辻静雄 [1933-1993; the noun 辻 means a crossroads], a former crime reporter who, in his late twenties, decided to pursue his passion for classical French and Japanese cuisines by opening a cooking school. Tsuji introduced Bocuse to kaiseki 会席 [料理; see (6) below] * * * In its [kaiseki's] exactitude and restraint, Bocuse saw an approach that was in many ways the very opposite of decadent French haute cuisine. Returning to Lyon, he drew upon the principles of kaiseki as he pioneered what became known as nouvelle cuisine * * * nearly every contemporary restaurant’s tasting menu owes its structure to Bocuse's dégustation, which in turn owes its identity to Japanese kaiseki. "
(a) Paul Bocuse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bocuse
(1926 – 2018)
(b)
(i) Lyon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyon
(third-largest city in France [after Paris and Marseille]; Lyon had a population of 513,275 in 2015; its Gaulish name was Lugdunum ("Desired Mountain") )
(ii) Gaulish language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaulish_language
(iii) Neither Lyonnais nor lyonnais is English word, and hence can not find in an online English dictionary.

French-English dictionary:
* Lyonnais (noun masculine): "an inhabitant of Lyon"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Lyonnais
* lyonnais (adjective masculine; feminine singular lyonnaise, masculine plural lyonnais, feminine plural lyonnaises): "of or relating to Lyon, France" "
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lyonnais
^ I do not know the pronunciation.
* dégustation (noun feminine): "act of tasting or trying out food"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dégustation

(2) "Naoko Takei Moore, a cookbook author and Japanese food expert, told me. The chef Kyle Connaughton spent decades studying the intricacies of kaiseki cuisine before opening his Sonoma restaurant, SingleThread"
(a) Naoko Takei Moore 武井モア奈緒子 (Naoko TAKEI 武井奈緒子 is her maiden name.)
(b) Sonoma County (which is "named for" City of Sonoma. en.wikipedia.org for the county) has a Sonoma Valley with Sonoma Creek through it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoma_Valley
("According to Jack London, who had a ranch there, the Native American word Sonoma means 'valley of the moon' ")

作者: choi 时间: 3-9-2019 13:12
(3) "The most prominent American kaiseki restaurant is n/naka [2011- ], a small Los Angeles establishment owned and run by the forty-four-year-old Japanese-American chef Niki Nakayama [hence the restaurant name; the surname is 中山]. * * * Housed in a low gray building on a quiet corner in Palms, a neighborhood [in City of Los Angeles] tucked between sleepy Culver City and the Santa Monica Freeway, it is open four nights a week * * * Aspiring diners * * * have shown up at the kitchen door and tried to palm a few hundred bucks to the general manager."
(a)
(i) Palms, Los Angeles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palms,_Los_Angeles
(northwest of Culver City; Palms was annexed to the city of Los Angeles in 1915)
(ii) Culver City, California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culver_City,_California
("a city in Los Angeles County. The city was named after its founder, Harry Culver," a real estate developer)
(b) palm (vt):
"1 a: to conceal in or with the hand <palm a card>
b : to take or pick up stealthily
c : to hand stealthily <palmed him a dollar bill>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/palm

(4) "sushi and kaiseki are in many ways opposites. Sushi is as much a culinary performance as it is a category of food. The itamae (head chef), usually wearing a kimono and a headband, prepares your maki 巻 [noun] and nigiri 握り [rice ball made with a clutching hand] right in front of you. There's theatre in slicing the fish, brushing on the sauces, shaping the rice between agile fingers; there's banter with the customers, and macho jockeying with other chefs behind the bar. In a sushi tasting menu, or omakase, the chef is free to improvise the meal as he goes along, choosing whatever fish looks best. (The word “omakase” means “I trust you.”) Kaiseki, by contrast, has a predetermined flow, its interrelated courses incorporating dozens—if not hundreds—of ingredients and techniques to form a single narrative arc. Even the most exorbitant sushi omakase can be over with in forty-five minutes; a kaiseki meal takes hours to unfold. Junko SAKAI 酒井順子 [1966- ; Japanese essayist: ja.wikipedia.org], a Japanese writer, has likened a sushi chef's approach to that of an essayist, and a kaiseki chef’s to that of a novelist. * * * In the early days of n/naka, Nakayama made the menu as Japanese as possible. * * * [With time:] Her food, she came to realize, could be 'California kaiseki'—like her, a fusion of Japan and LA."

Jim Breen's online Japanese-English dictionary :
* itama-e 板前【いたまえ】 (n) "(1) (ktb

chef (esp. of high-end Japanese cuisine); cook; (2) (orig. meaning) area of a kitchen that contains the chopping board" (The ita and ma-e are Japanese pronunciations of kanji 板 and 前, respectively.)
^ His dictionary uses "ktb" to signify "kantō 関東" regional language variant (or dialect).
* お任せ; 御任せ【おまかせ】 (n,v)" "(See 任せる) leaving a decision to someone else (often of a meal to be selected by the chef)"
^ makaseru 任せる【まかせる】 (v): "to entrust (eg a task) to another; to leave to"
* ankimo あん肝; 鮟肝【あんきも】 (n): "monkfish liver" (Kanji 肝 has "kan" and "kimo" as Chinese and Japanese pronunciations, respectively.)
^ Often called the "poor man's lobster," monkfish is bottom dweller. FDA in 2007 warned against eating it because it may actually be poisonous puffer fish.
* shiizakana 強い肴【しいざかな】 (n): "side dish served in order to encourage the consumption of alcohol (kaiseki cuisine)"
^ shiiru 強いる【しいる】 (v): "to force"
^ sakana 肴; 酒菜【さかな】 (n): "appetizer or snack served with drinks"

作者: choi 时间: 3-9-2019 13:19
(5) "At the heart of kaiseki is the notion of shun 旬 [seasonality or being in season; on the other hand, Japanese also have 旬 in traditional Chinese meaning: 上中下旬 of a month] * * * Some kaiseki chefs divide the year not into quarters but into seventy-two micro-seasons. The meal's first course, sakizuke 先附 [an appetizer], is like a waymark on a map: You are here. In mid-January, when I ate at n/naka, with the Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Bill Addison, that [先附] meant a display of subtropical winter sweetness: diced Hokkaido scallop under a vivid orange gelée. * * * * * * Our server, an elegant Japanese woman in a sharp black blazer, told us to think of the second course, a multitude of two-bite dishes arranged on an oblong tray, as the table of contents for the rest of the meal: ankimo (monkfish liver [defined in (4)]) pâté; a skewer of lobster sashimi daubed with salty-tart preserved plum; a tiny porcelain cup of chawanmushi 茶碗蒸し (savory [egg] custard); enoki-mushroom tempura"
(a) Following China, Japan had 二十四節気 sekki (from 立春 to 大寒), each of which is divided further (by Japanese) into three kō 候 (thus altogether 72 候 in a year; five days in a 候, which is translated as "micro-season").
(b) waymark (n)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/waymark
(c)
(i) French-English dictionary:
* gelée (noun feminine; from the feminine past participle of [French verb] geler [to freeze], from Latin verb gelare): "jelly"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gelée
(ii) English dictionary:

gelée
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gelée
(pronunciation)
(d) sharp (adj): "STYLISH, DRESSY"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sharp

(6) "Nakayama runs n/naka according to omotenashi [hospitality], a practice of compassionate service that involves anticipating guests' wants. The spacious dining area is divided by wooden screens into intimate subsections. * * * The thirteen-course meal costs two hundred and twenty-five dollars per person * * * The popular story dates it [kaiseki] back to the sixteenth century, when the tea master Sen no Rikyū 千利休 [1522 – 1591; 茶人 ('no' is no reflected in his Kanji name, as is so often in ancient Japanese names)] is said to have codified its essential principle of seasonality. He is also said to have declared that the meal should consist of no more than a cup of soup with rice, fish, and pickles, all of which had to be of the highest quality—an opulence of perfection, rather than of wealth. Eventually, kaiseki branched into two traditions: the spare meal 懐石 [料理] still served with the tea ceremony today, and the luxurious kaiseki 会席 [料理] served in restaurants—without tea, but with plenty of sake on hand. In kanji, there are two ways of writing 'kaiseki,' to refer to these different strains. * * * Ingredients with narrow, days-long windows of shun—like bamboo shoots in spring, or plum blossoms in winter * * * Almost all of kaiseki’s rules can be subverted by the chef * * * For the hearty course called shiizakana, which typically features a meaty soup or stew, Nakayama serves pasta: a swirl of spaghetti alla chitarra, tossed in a creamy ragu of abalone liver [which Japanese, but not Italians, eat -- as a whole or in paste] and pickled cod roe, topped with Burgundy [a French region] black truffles."
(a) Prunus mume 梅 (in both China and Japan, where the kanji is pronounced "ume," which English language mangled into "mume;" "came from in the south of mainland China around the Yangtze River and was later introduced to Japan") en.wikipedia.org for Prunus mume.
is hermaphrodite (has both male and female organs) but needs cross-pollination (pollins from another tree; mediated by insects) to bear fruit.
(b) The shiizakana 強い肴 is defined in (4). It is a dish in both 懐石料理 and 会席料理.
(c) spaghetti alla chitarra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_alla_chitarra
(a variety of egg pasta typical of Abruzzo [region], Italy; They have a square cross section about 2–3 mm thick)

Quote: "The name of this spaghetti comes from the tool (the so-called chitarra, literally 'guitar') this pasta is produced with * * * The tool named chitarra was invented around 1890 in the province of Chieti. Before then, pasta was cut with a special rolling pin with notches to obtain its particular shape." (citation omitted).

(i) Italian-English dictionary:
* alla (contraction of a + la (feminine singular definite article)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alla
(ii)
(A) The (Modern) Italian noun feminine "chitarra" is guitar.
(B) guitar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar

section 1 History: "The English word guitar, the German Gitarre, and the French guitare were all adopted from the Spanish guitarra, which comes from the Andalusian Arabic قيثارة (qīthārah) and the Latin cithara, which in turn came from the Ancient Greek κιθάρα (kithara), which comes from the Persian word 'sihtar.' This pattern of naming is also visible in setar, dutar, and sitar. The word 'tar' at the end of all of these words is a Persian word that means 'string. " (citations omitted).

(iii) chitarra the tool.
(A) Deb Lindsey, Spaghetti Alla Chitarra. Washington Post, Mar 3, 2016 (under the heading "Recipe Finder")
https://www.washingtonpost.com/r ... _term=.f73b159746de
("The design [of the special pasta-cutting tool, chitarra,] is simple: a rectangular wooden frame strung with metal wires that cut sheets of pasta into strands. The resulting shape of these noodles -- square, rather than round -- gives them textural appeal")
(B) Dave Bayer (a math professor), Making a Pasta Guitar. Columbia University, undated
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~bayer/Chitarra/
(how to use la chitarra: "One rolls out pieces of pasta dough by hand, places each sheet of fresh pasta on the wires, and presses the sheet through the wires with a rolling pin")

The German, Scandinavian, and Jewish (Ashkenazic) name Bayer means "someone from Bavaria (German Bayern)."

作者: choi 时间: 3-9-2019 13:21
(7) "When we'd finished eating, Nakayama came out to say hello. * * * Some chefs make the rounds and glad-hand, but Nakayama emerges to greet only one table at a time, for a brief exchange of gratitude before each diner leaves. * ** One recent morning, as I sat with Nakayama and Iida at their sunny kitchen table over a breakfast of miso soup, rice, pickles, and an onsen egg * * * When she's off duty, Nakayama is ebullient and discursive, a quicksilver conversationalist who stretches out her words with a hint of Valley Girl drawl."
(a) glad hand (v): "also gladhand [or glad-hand], 1903, from verbal phrase to give the glad hand 'extend a welcome' (1895)"
https://www.etymonline.com/word/glad%20hand
(b) Isle Minnesota~Grand Welcome~Big Glad Hand~1951 Linen Comic Postcard.
https://www.hippostcard.com/list ... ic-postcard/8702570

Isle, Minnesota
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle,_Minnesota
(The city was named for the island near its harbor on Mille Lacs Lake)
(c) For onsen egg, see onsen tamago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onsen_tamago

In Japanese, egg is tamago, whose kanji representation is either 卵 or 玉子 (the latter due to "tama" and "ko" -- each Japanese pronunciations of kanji 玉 and 子).
(d) discursive (adj; etymology; Did you know?)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discursive
(e) Valley girl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl

(8) "Yubako KAMOHARA 蒲原ゆば子, the head chef of Tsurutokame, a women-run kaiseki restaurant in Tokyo * * *  When Yoshikazu ONO 小野禎一, the son of the famed Tokyo sushi chef Jiro Ono, was asked, by the Wall Street Journal, why there were no women featured in the documentary about his father, he explained that 'because of the menstrual cycle women have an imbalance in their taste.' * * * Azami [Nakayama's sushi restaurant prior to the present kaiseki restaurant; azami is Japanese pronunciation of thistle 薊] earned appreciative writeups on local [LA] restaurant blogs * * * [Between Azami and the current kaiseki restaurant, Nakayama] worked as the chef at a deli owned by her sister in Arcadia, the Los Angeles suburb where they’d grown up. In the evenings, Nakayama turned the tiny storefront into the San Gabriel Valley’s most unlikely hot ticket"
(a) About the Japanese surname 蒲原.

With Japanese pronunciation kama or gama, 蒲
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ガマ
is a kind of cattail, on the wetland.
(b)
(i) The restaurant name Tsurutokame is Japanese pronunciation for 鶴と亀.
(ii) The restaurant name is written in hiragana: つるとかめ. (The 'tsuru" and "kame" are Japanese pronunciations of kanji 亀 and 鶴, respectively.)
(iii) 亀と鶴
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/亀と鶴
(The Turtle and the Crane is a 1988 piano piece composed by Frederic Anthony Rzewski [1938- ; born in Massachusetts], American of Polish descent)
(c) Jirō ONO  小野二郎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiro_Ono_(chef)
(1925- )

He entertained then president Obama in 2014.
(d) write-up (n): "a written account  especially : a flattering article"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/write-up
(e) Arcadia, California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia,_California
(The city is named after Arcadia [a region named after Arcas, a hunter-turned king in Greek mythology], Greece)
(f) San Gabriel Valley
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gabriel_Valley
(lying generally to the east of the city of Los Angeles; The valley derives its name from the San Gabriel River that flows southward); San Fernando Valley to the northwest

(9) "The evening after my meal at n/naka, I joined Nakayama and [Carole] IIDA 飯田 for dinner at the Beverly Hills restaurant Matsuhisa, where, three decades ago, Nobu Matsuhisa [1949- ; full name Nobuyuki MTSUHISA 松久信幸] became a sushi superstar. * * * When Matsuhisa opened, in 1987, its Japanese fusion [Japanese dishes with Peruvian ingredients: en.wikipedia.org] became a sensation among the Hollywood élite. Robert De Niro was so captivated that he convinced the chef to partner with him in a new venture, which became the Nobu empire [Nobu Restaurants (co-owned with De Niro), plus Matsuhisa's own Matsuhisa Restaurants]. * * * Nakayama chatted with one of her seafood suppliers, who had dropped by to deliver four burly kegani 毛蟹 [composed of ke 毛 + kani 蟹], or horsehair crabs, their strawberry-colored shells covered in spiky whiskers. * * * Nakayama compared her creative process to playing a game like Candy Crush—each new menu increasing in difficulty and complexity, in a never-ending competition against herself. At n/naka * * * Nakayama and Iida * * * worked side by side, facing the shōji 障子 [sliding] screens that shield the kitchen from the dining room. Snow-crab season had just ended, and the kegani would replace it on the menu, as the centerpiece of a turnip stew. Kegani is sweet, but snow crab is sweeter"

Candy Crush Saga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Crush_Saga

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