Customer Reviews

Kaiseki: The Exquisite Cuisine of Kyoto's Kikunoi Restaurant

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have two sorts of cookbooks in my collection. There are the books that I cook from, in which many pages have food stains, folded-down corners, and bindings that fall open to favorite recipes. I also have cookbooks that I consider "picture books." Sure, they have recipes, but I look at them primarily for inspiration or entertainment or fantasy ("Yeah, like I'm gonna cook something with two pounds of fois gras!" or "That's over the top, but isn't it beautiful?"). I rarely cook anything from the picture books, but that's okay; I enjoy them nonetheless.

Kaiseki is very much in the latter category. If this book isn't nominated for an award on visual merit alone, I shall be appalled. Photographically, it's simply stunning. If you appreciate how beautifully food can be presented... well, it earns its five stars right there. It's also a stunning example of how good Japanese food can be; many of the photos make me yearn to consume them.

The cookbook is organized in an unusual manner. The recipes are all in the back of the book, in small type (too small, I think). Most of the book is given over to the delicious photos, menus, and text. The text is largely what you'd expect as a long headnote in a regular cookbook. For example, you get two long paragraphs about the seasonality of fresh bamboo shoots, accompanying a blow-you-away picture of bamboo shoot sushi (it looks like a bird of paradise flower arrangement). These sections are divided into Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, reflecting the restaurant's focus on eating whatever is ripe right now.

I can't imagine that I'm going to cook anything here, though. The author doesn't try to Americanize anything, or to suggest "if you can't find sea bream, substitute [something else]." It's definitely a Japanese book. Maybe, if you have more Asian markets than I do and you know the cuisine better, you're better able to contemplate the recipes. If so, you'll probably be interested in steamed tilefish with fresh green tea leaves; or abalone in a salt dome; or fresh black soybean skewered on pine needles.

But don't worry if your ability to make these recipes is as distant as my own. Kaiseki may spend more time on your coffee table than in your kitchen, and that's okay. This is a gorgeous, gorgeous book, and well worth it for anyone who simply loves to admire food treated well. It would make a superb present for any foodie, too.

Yoshihiro Murata's "Kaiseki" is a real beauty. It provides a walk through the most elegant of Japanese cuisines, showing off the fine purity of the tea ceremony meal with all of it's evocative wabi/sabi aesthetic. The photographs are stunning and well worth a perusal. The actual recipes are pretty arcane (I would refer the home cook to Tsuji's "Japanese Cooking" or Vitell's "The World in a Bowl of Tea"), but this will be a real addition to a cook's library or to the Japanophile.

This is the most beautiful cookbook I own. Stunning photography and lovely design captures the spirit of this immaculate cuisine perfectly. Many of the ingredients used in the recipes will be hard to find if you're not living in Japan, but this is unlikely to be a book you'll cook from on a daily basis anyway. It acts more as a source of inspiration and has changed and informed the way I think about technique and presentation, not just of Japanese food, but everything I cook. A must-buy.

There is no way anyone outside of Japan will be able to make any of the recipes in this book. Don't even try. Just enjoy the beautiful photos and the charming descriptions of a very exotic cuisine that is inaccessible even to the Japanese!

I rated it high because most people will never get the chance to have a Kaiseki meal so this is the next best thing. Just gorgeous.

This is a beautiful book. It looks at the Kaiseki meal (which comes from the food served during the Chaji, or tea ceremony, and how it has evolved into a seasonal culinary art form. Mr. Murata shows his skill at creating food that evokes the culinary traditions and the seaonal landscape of Japan while transforming this artform into his own unique expression of Kaiseki. It's a beautifully put togheter book. the recipes are surprisingly easy to follow and offer great results. As a History buff, I would like more back ground on Kaiseki and it's relationship to the tea ceremony as well as the seasonal, traditional foods. Still, this is a great book and a welcome additon to your cookbook collection.

This book gets my vote for the most beautiful cookbook to come out this year. The photography is amazing and literally takes you on a journey to Japan. The book very well portrays what the Chef and Restaurateur were trying to achieve in design and menu. The dishes served in the Restaurant are Seasonal, and this is reflected throughout the book. At first glance, I was afraid that it was strictly a pictorial but found the coinciding recipes at the back. This was a bit confusing to me but as I read through the book, the layout had such a wonderful unobstructed flow through it. The recipes range from the simple preparation of Dashi to the more complex Yuzu Sansho Cup. This book is definitely not for a beginner, but a well seasoned cook who
is looking for challenge and inspiration will definitely find it here.

I would consider this book as a guidebook to Japanese kaiseki cuisine rather than a cookbook. The author's restaurant received three stars in the new Michelin Kyoto red restaurant guide. If you are going to a kaiseki restaurant for the first time, this book will give you a bit more information what it is about. This food is expensive so another USD30 for this book is well spent money! I wish the book would have provided much more contextual information as well as more guidebook-like information about kaiseki. For instance how the dishes are designed visually to represent seasons, etc. The kind of stuff that discerning Japanese foodies already understand. You get a bit of this knowledge when reading between the lines, but I would like to have it more spelt out.

It is this reviewer who consider the book a guidebook. The book itself is organised as a standard celebrity chef cookbook and recipes are provided. As such it is less successful. Even if you find all ingredients, the book doesn't say anything about how to get the visual display right (except for the pictures).

So this book is for those who are going to eat proper kaiseki food and want to learn more, or those who just want to learn more and don't have a chance to eat. I would not recommend this book as a cookbook at all.

A beautiful book. My criticism would be that there are a lot of ingredients that I wouldn't be able to find easily, but lovely descriptions of the food and culture of kaiseki.

Kaiseki is reputedly an exquisite Japanese cuisine that I had hoped to explore in this volume. The book is lavishly produced and a feast for the eyes. The next time I am in Kyoto or Tokyo, I will book a table.

Unfortunately, the ingredients needed for most of these dishes are either unknown or unavailable to the Seattle area where fresh seafood abounds. If you have ready access to sea bream milt, salted cherry blossoms, fresh sea cucumber roe, and tosa-zu vinegar jelly, ingredients from the first four recipes for illustration, then you should have this book in your kitchen. No substitute ingredients or resources are provided. Although lavishly produced, it is destined for a dusty corner of my pantry, being fairly useless as a practical resource.

chef murata is one of the best kaiseki chef in japan, had the oppurtunity to met him once and learn a lot from a man with lots of passion and knowledge. the book allows non japanese reader to learn and open up to a very old tradition from japan.
a must buy book.