Change In Plans

This post is about the spectacular culinary/cultural adventure that we had last night at Ryokan Hiiragiya in Kyoto.  The word

 “dinner” doesn’t seem grand enough to characterize the 14-course, 54-dish, 81-ingredient (at least) extravaganza of food, service, décor, and Japanese culture.

 

A ryokan, as I found out, is a traditional Japanese inn.

  Kyoto is renowned for its ryokans, and staying overnight in one is a classic “must do” gaijin experience.  Because we happened to be in Kyoto on Japanese Culture Day, we couldn’t get overnight reservations.  India did manage to book us for an early dinner at Hiiragiya, which we were told is one of the best two ryokans in Kyoto (and, therefore, in the world).

 

Ryokan Hiiragiya is a wooden structure hidden in the small streets on the [west] side of the twelve-hundred-year-old Kyoto street grid. We were greeted enthusiastically at the ryokan door by a gang of five staff members, who switched our street shoes for special slippers, and shuffled us down the corridor into a private dining room.

 

I’m sure there is a beautiful Japanese word for a ryokan dining room: surrounded by glass and an ancient garden on two sides, with floor mats and a highly polished wooden table. The interior was probably last updated in the mid-1970s, though.  The bright fluorescent lighting combined with the unhealthy-looking greens, browns, and grays of the carpets and drapes to create an ambiance more “mid-level bureaucrat” than “romantic dining”.  Despite the décor and lighting, the room had a strangely peaceful feel.  Even our normally raucous children became somehow calm and dignified as we sat on the floor.

 

Our server was an incredibly well trained and gracious young woman, who pronounced her name “Chia.” Each time she entered the room she bowed deeply and sang out, “sorry to keep you waiting,” even if she had departed only 15 seconds before.  India and I laughed when she handed us the menu for the “Kaiseki” (i.e., traditional) set-course dinner for the evening.  We laughed both because the menu was so long and complicated and poetic and beautiful, and because we thought our kids would eat less than 10% of it.

 

It would not be very interesting to list out all fifty-four dishes, but each one was tiny and beautiful to look at, and filled with exotic tastes and textures. 

The overall theme was autumn, so many of the dishes were garnished with freshly picked tiny red Japanese maple leaves and yellow ginkgo leaves. 

 

Even with the English menu in front of us, we frequently had no clue what we were eating (or not eating, depending on the course). 

 

Some of the best courses included:

• Tuna sashimi served with green perilla, young perilla stems, Japanese spiny lobster, red turnip, pumpkin, wasabi, and laver.  Laver is a dark seaweed puree pressed into tiny squares, looking exactly like a square chocolate chip.  Both kids were fooled by this one.
• Japanese Spanish mackerel with soy sauce, scallops, chestnuts, Japanese ginger, gingko nut, sweet potato, and propagule.  Propagule was sort of like an olive, served with a stiff pine needle through it.
• Steamed crab meat, turnip, Komatsuna-cress (?), Yuzu citrus-Miso (?) and sticky kudzu sauce.  The sauce sounds like something you might serve at a Tennessee meat-and-three restaurant.
• Shark-fin soup with tofu, ginger, and more sticky kudzu sauce.  Zola rallied to try the shark-fin soup, in part to impress his surfing buddies when we get to South Africa in December.

 

Some of the other courses could best be described as “too sophisticated,” even for the most adventurous palates at the table:

• Fermented sea cucumber belly and shiitake mushrooms in hot egg pudding.  This course was appropriately named, in Japanese, “Mushi-mono”
• The “Pickle Course” of pickled red turnip, pickled Shizumurasaki radish, and Mibuna cress deep pickled in salted rice-bran paste.  Ugh.
• Cod milt, cucumber, Japanese ginger, long green onion, grated white radish  and chili pepper, Sudachi lime, and Pon-Zu sauce containing soy sauce and citrus juice.  It turns out that “cod milt” means “digestive organs of cod.”  This was actually the only dish in the dinner which I found I had to truly gag down.

 

The food was an adventure, and it definitely made us feel as though we were eating authentic Japanese cuisine.  While they were awake (see below), both kids were on their best behavior, and they tried a wide variety of truly unusual foods.  They even practiced with their chopsticks and drank green tea.  Tallulah cracked us up as she bowed back solemnly every time Chia came in and bowed to us.

 

What we will remember most from our evening at Ryokan Hiiragiya will be the unbelievably gracious and welcoming service.

 

As you might expect, neither child was truly excited about the cuisine, and both were physically tired from running up and down Monkey Mountain and around the Nijo Castle yesterday.  That, combined with residual jet lag, left them heavy-lidded by the middle of the long meal.  When Chia saw that Tallulah and Zola were struggling to stay awake, she came in with a full futon, and mattress cover, and duvet.  She made a bed for them on the floor in about 45 seconds.  Two minutes later, both kids were sleeping soundly.  India and I had the rest of the dinner as a peaceful tete-a-tete under the fluorescent lights. 

 

Strangely, Chia kept bringing out dishes for the kids, setting them at their places on the table, and clearing them untouched.  This gave me an opportunity to double dip on crab in sticky kudzu sauce.

 

Near the end of the dinner, the graceful proprietress of Ryokan Hiiragiya glided in to greet us formally, and to thank us for being there. 

She also said, bowing toward our sleeping children, that, “perhaps the Kaiseki food was not to the tastes” of her younger guests. Of course we lied that the kids loved it, but that they were jet lagged, and we thanked her for a wonderful meal and for Chia’s gracious service.  The proprietress thanked us for thanking her, and then we thanked the proprietress for thanking us for thanking her.  I think this type of exchange is not uncommon in Japan. 

 

The proprietress brought out small gifts for us: eight sets of lacquered chop sticks with an autumn theme, and small change purses for the kids.  We thanked her for the gifts, and she thanked us for thanking her, and then we restarted the little mutual appreciation cycle again.  Her warmth and hospitality were sincere, however, and we were genuinely flattered that she came in to speak with us.

 

When it was time to go, another group of five ryokan staff came and helped us change back into our walking slippers, carry the sleeping kids to the entrance, change us into our street shoes, and finally assist us out to the taxi they had called.  We found that while we were eating dinner, someone had polished my shoes and cleaned the kids’ filthy Crocs.  Yet another very gracious touch.

 

Overall, India and I were very glad that we had the ryokan dinner.  It was expensive, but only about half of what I had expected in my “worst-case scenario.”  It is definitely an evening that we could not have replicated elsewhere, and not one that we will forget. 

 

Incidentally, both kids were very hungry this morning, but we got them some bacon and eggs, and all was well.