COMMENTARY, April 27 — When is dining not about dining? When is a meal not a meal, or at least more than just a meal?
Enter the world of kaiseki-ryori, specifically the ancient Kyoto variety or kyo-kaiseki — the finest form of Japanese dining.
You may have heard that a traditional kyo-kaiseki meal comprises a particular order of courses, starting with an appetiser before running through a gamut of steamed, grilled, fried and boiled dishes before finishing with dessert for a sweet ending.
But kaiseki is more than simply the dishes, more than counting down the courses as you check each off the menu.
This is a meal that begins, not with the food or even being seated at your table, but with a walk. A walk in the garden.
There is typically a path from the entrance of the machiya style teahouse to the interior building where the dining rooms await guests. It runs through the heart of the garden and you observe the random shapes and sizes of stones that form this middle path, parting bush from brook.
There is much else to take in, to absorb, if you allow yourself time and space for it.
The leaves falling down gently if it is autumn; the bare branches bursting into fresh blossoms if it is spring. The placid waters of the fish pond broken by the flick of a koi’s fiery tail, the surface tension shattering and resuming gently.
It’s an experience, after all, so why hurry? The chefs will take their time in the kitchen to prepare the exquisite dishes for each of the many courses to come; by taking your time to slow your steps and soothe your heart, you are readying yourself to better appreciate their efforts.
For dining at a kaiseki-ryori restaurant is akin to an invitation, after all, to savour the sublime. It is not merely the taste of the delicacies you are served but the subtle shifts in sensations.
As you pass from the green of the garden outside to the colours of the flower arrangement inside, you are filled with a lightness. You no longer drag your feet or move with heavy dread; you float, almost.
You leave the troubles of the world outside, if only for a few hours. Sometimes a few hours are all we need.
Removing your shoes — perhaps the last vestiges of what awaits upon returning to the streets and the noise beyond these walls — you change into Japanese indoor slippers. There is a time and place for everything, and everything in its place.
A sense of order is a calming hand after the realm of uncertainty we all reside in.
You sit down on cushions laid upon tatami mats, your legs sliding into a hidden alcove beneath the table. The server brings you a welcome drink and an amuse-bouche before the kaiseki courses properly arrive.
Every detail sets the mood, and it is a specific mood that the kaiseki master hopes to achieve, in sync with the seasons. Because dining, just like every other daily activity in traditional Japanese life, ought to be conducted with a sense of one’s surroundings.
What bounty does summer bring, or winter? What is fresh and at its finest?
Slivers of fugu or puffer fish sashimi during winter. Come spring, a strawberry sorbet infused with pickled sakura blossoms. Summer may see delicate fans of unagi, the freshwater eel at its fattest during these hottest months. A bowl of white miso soup blended with chestnut for an autumn treat.
There is a lesson here, you tell yourself. Perhaps the lesson is not to treat every day the same, unchanging and cast in stone. Nothing is permanent and we do better if we are able to bend, like bamboo, else risk breaking like harder, more unyielding material.
Perhaps the lesson is not to be gluttonous — as we nibble on a bite-sized morsel, we realise how fine it is to have just enough and not more than we need — nor to starve ourselves of the good things in life.
What do the land and the sea offer? Sometimes a pairing of both — such as delicately steamed anago or salt-water eel atop radish fresh from the farm and simmered in sake — is a dance between two different worlds that are never far apart and intrinsically linked.
The point is to savour, to taste, to enjoy everything to the fullest. And the only approach that works is to slow down and take it all in, one small detail at a time. Rush and you miss something, possibly everything.
So: please don’t hurry. Savour everything.
Perhaps the lesson is to take a break. You sip on some carefully brewed Japanese green tea to freshen your palate in between courses. No sprinting from dish to dish, no bingeing without tasting, no mindless gorging.
Perhaps the lesson is to always look for the silver lining, the brighter and sweeter side of a sometimes tough and unforgiving existence. You end your meal with some dessert, some sweet potato purée mixed with angko or adzuki bean paste or a platter of fresh, seasonal fruit.
Eventually — inevitably — it is time to leave. You have finished your meal and the kaiseki experience is complete.
You return to the streets outside. You are greeted by the familiar noise beyond the walls of the establishment. But you are not the same.
You carry with you a stillness arisen from supping with awareness. You carry a lighter heart and know that fresh burdens will not feel as heavy as before.
You are changed: more mindful and thankful. You are, you realise with gentle glee, happier and more at ease.
For more slice-of-life stories, visit lifeforbeginners.com.
