It’s always a nice surprise when an article that I shot months or in this case over two years earlier comes out. It’s like an old friend coming to visit. “A Taste of Tokyo” just hit the stands – Town & Country, August 2009. Town & Country Travel commissioned the piece on restaurants in Tokyo but when that magazine closed, the article was shifted to Town & Country and published in a much shortened form.

Photos below marked with * are published in the article.

My incredibly talented wife, Dorothy Kalins, wrote the Town & Country article and arranged for us to do another piece as well so we could afford the trip.“The Konnichiwa Kid” was produced for Budget Travel, (July/August 2007), an article was about taking your teen to Japan. Our son Lincoln had been hounding us to go for a few years. He’d been interested in anime and karate; he even took Japanese at The Japan Society.

You can’t go to Tokyo and wing it. Getting lost is part of the adventure or frustration depending on what time of day it is. House numbers make no sense. The first house built in a neighborhood is number one. The second may be two blocks away, but it’s number two. Plus, there are 140,000 restaurants in Tokyo. From Dorothy’s intense research, we did very well. We ate at about a dozen places, high and low, including two three stars — Quintessence and  Kozue.

Quintessence chef, Shuzo Kishida, looks like he’s about 15 years old. His plates often appear as indecipherable modern art – great for photographs – extraordinary flavors. “…a perfect half a tomato, not a traditional Japanese ingredient but served with one that is, ume (plum), and strewn with blossoms: a spoonful of goat’s milk bavarois on a soft slick of olive oil; a slice of  roast pork, cooked for hours at low temperature.”

And, a kaiseke meal for the ages at Kozue in the Park Hyatt of Lost In Translation fame. The food was fabulous and the presentation simply awesome. Each dish was served on a handmade, one-of-a-kind, ceramic plate.

Our favorite places were simple restaurants: nothing but tempura at Tsunahachi, all soba at Yabu Soba near Akihabara (“electric town” for everything electronic). And, Tsukiji fish market was astounding, even having to go at 3:00 AM. Interconnected, football size warehouses: in one room dozens of fresh blue fin tuna laid out on pallets, inspectors using flashlight and magnifying glasses, auctions roving from fish to individual fish. In another the frozen variety. Our guide works at the market and was able to get us into the private uni (sea urchin) auction. Precious, covered wooden boxes. When I asked to take a plastic cover off so I could photograph, it was done with great haste and lots of nervous looks over their shoulders. Exposure to air degrades the product. Who knew? What better place to eat sushi than right in the market itself, a little counter restaurant called Iwasa Sushi.

Not all meals were planned. One day we used the typeface test to find a place for lunch: if the sign has good type and design, what’s inside is usually good, the owners get it. It turned out to be a working man’s restaurant; we were the only ones not wearing coveralls. Behind  the counter a husband and wife were doing everything, including washing dishes. When we realized that no one in the place spoke English, we simply pointed at what other diners were eating and loved every bite.

Tokyo is so big, it would take weeks to get comfortable there. Kyoto was more manageable, I’d return in a second. Well, I’d return to Tokyo in a New York Minute. Ok, in Kyoto, a small restaurant called Negiya Heikichi, was recommended which we loved so much we ate their twice in four days. The chef spoke no English, of course, but we communicated just fine. The meal began with a basket filled with vegetables from which we were asked to choose three. Since we had no idea what they were saying, we thought perhaps it was a vegetarian restaurant. No, the meal was built around the chosen vegetables. The second night we went, we felt like regulars, sitting at the bar watching

Takashi Tsubaki’s cook. He kept offering us amazing dishes from paper thin tuna sashimi to grilled fava beans, and a variety of sakes which I guess he was saying, “You simply must try this one.”

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