34 | February 2015 | restaurant | bighospitality.co.uk

Words/Joe Lutrario Photography/John Carey

The kaiseki king

Umu’s executive chef is an accomplished potter, flower arranger, calligrapher and fisherman. And he’s a formidable talent in the kitchen, too

theworlds50best.com | restaurant | February 2015 | 35

UMU

In a tiny but carefully kept first-floor flat in the midst of Mayfair’s Shepherd Market a middle aged Japanese man sits in front of a potter’s wheel. To his side are a couple of dozen tiny white bowls

waiting to be glazed and fired in a kiln. Each is a slightly different height and

circumference but – even to an entirely untrained eye – there is impressive uniformity in thickness, the curve of the bowl and the fragile lip from which sake will eventually be sipped.

Given the quality of the work, it may come as a surprise that pottery is merely one of a number of sidelines for Yoshinori Ishii, or Chef Yoshi, as he is more commonly known at Umu, the Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant he oversees as executive chef.

This mild-mannered and sensitive polymath has an impressive number of arrows in his metaphorical quiver. If he doesn’t spend his days off astride his potter’s wheel, he’ll likely be found in the countryside searching for rare flowers for Umu’s artful flower displays, or perhaps practising his Japanese calligraphy.

All his crafts feed back into the Bruton Place restaurant. Umu now houses more than 200 of Ishii’s pieces including chopstick rests and tiny grey mukozuke bowls, which are used for the appetisers on the restaurant’s intricate multi-course kaiseki menus. Eventually, Ishii hopes that every single piece of pottery at the restaurant will bear his mark.

He puts ornate, hand-printed cards under a piece of glass topped with his impossibly thin and neat slices of sashimi so that the design is gradually revealed as you eat. When you’re done, flip the card over to read one of Ishii’s regularly changing messages of goodwill. And then there are Umu’s flower displays, which Ishii tends to every single morning, sourcing all his blooms and other esoteric flora himself.

Many chefs would keep such extra-curricular activities on the down-low – the floristry especially. The default position of most restaurant operations is to declare that the chef never leaves the stove. But Ishii is comfortable with the fact that a great deal of his work takes place outside his kitchen,

Eastern promise fulfilled: Yoshinori Ishii has served

a long apprenticeship

UMU

theworlds50best.com | restaurant | February 2015 | 37

which he co-runs with long-standing right-hand man and head chef Masato Nishihara.

A quick look at Ishii’s relatively short but impressive résumé at least partly explains why he chose to take such a holistic approach. After attending Japan’s Tsuji culinary school, he spent nine years at Kyoto Kitcho, one of the most famous kaiseki restaurants in Japan. It would leave an indelible mark on his approach to cooking and his general outlook on life.

“In Japan, it’s generally accepted that to become a culinary master you need to train for 10 years,” he says. “Initially, I only wanted to stay for five because I was young and felt I had other things to do, but I soon realised I would not learn it all in such a short period.”

At the start he was only allowed to perform and perfect a handful of tasks, and few of them involved cooking. Ishii was charged with tending the garden of a neighbouring Buddhist temple, looking after the three-Michelin star restaurant’s antique tableware and washing vegetables.

“Training in Japan is totally different to the UK. It’s tiny little steps,” he says. “You do the same thing each and every day, and slowly get better. We had to learn how to treat food and other objects carefully and with great respect. This is one of the central mentalities of kaiseki cuisine.”

This training and general mindset is very noticeable when watching Ishii work. He doesn’t move like most chefs. There’s no swagger or

懐石国王They think that I am

mad. But this is another tenet of

kaiseki. A holistic mindset is essential

hurry. Each action is thoughtful and elegant, whether he’s slicing sashimi or simply sealing a bag of potter’s clay.

Ishii is used to bemused expressions when he talks to other chefs about his many duties outside of the kitchen. “They don’t understand why I’d want to take responsibility for these things. They think that I am mad. But this is another tenet of kaiseki. A holistic mindset is essential. Everything is connected,” says Ishii, who sometimes finds it difficult to articulate the philosophy behind kaiseki, largely because most westerners lack the cultural touchstones to understand its more esoteric aspects.

Some of the underlying rules of kaiseki – which has its origins in 17th century tea ceremonies – could be applied to most modern tasting menus. A kaiseki menu demands a balance of taste, texture, appearance (colours are particularly important), fresh seasonal produce and carefully sourced local ingredients.

But before European restaurants rebrand their tasting menus, they should know that it’s a little more complicated than that. Kaiseki is a distillation of hundreds of years of Japanese culture. It is as much a ritual as it is a meal, although Umu has clearly worked hard to deformalise the experience and make it accessible to western diners.

With that said, one of the most intriguing things about Ishii is that he unashamedly produces authentic Japanese food that’s not necessarily in tune with western palates. Dinner at Umu doesn’t conform to expectations of what an Asian meal should be like. It’s extremely delicate, lightly seasoned and with none of the extremes of spice, sweetness and acidity that’s

All in order: the dining room at Umu

In bloom: ajisai (hydrangea), simmered Kamonasu aubergine, lily shoot

Perfect potatoes: ‘kofuki’ Jersey potato with white truffle

Clean and clear: soup with grilled red mullet and chrysanthemum lotus root

UMU

theworlds50best.com | restaurant | February 2015 | 39

found at more casual, Japanese-inspired establishments (and a few high-end ones, too). To those that haven’t eaten much high-end Japanese food before, it may be a bit of a shock.

Just what constitutes a kaiseki restaurant is a matter of some debate. Umu’s owner, high-profile restaurateur Marlon Abela, is of the opinion that his is the only truly authentic Kyoto kaiseki restaurant in London – although The Shiori, in Bayswater, may have something to say about that. Some Japanese restaurants that major on sushi and sashimi sometimes use kaiseki as shorthand for a Japanese tasting menu but this – as Ishii explains – is missing the point.

“Kaiseki is complex. It is a succession of courses that need to balance each other out and the meal also needs to be perfectly in tune with the rest of the restaurant experience. It’s many aspects of Japanese culture all brought together at the same time. It takes a lot of skill to do it properly.”

This, he continues, is why there are so few kaiseki restaurants in the UK. “Generally speaking, chefs that possess enough skill to get all the different aspects right will want to stay in Japan. The reason why sushi and tempura have become global dishes is because they’re relatively easy to get right and for people who aren’t Japanese to understand.”

The order of courses within a kaiseki menu are similar, but each restaurant must have its own style. Paradoxically, the discipline places as much emphasis on artful self-expression as it does on tradition and complying with a set of rules. Certainly, a proper kaiseki menu will demonstrate the skill of the kitchen in a number of key Japanese culinary disciplines, including the sourcing of high-quality produce, the preparation of sashimi, making broths and cooking rice. 

At Umu, the menu is arranged into mukozuke (a small appetiser), nimonowan (a simmered dish), tsukuri (sashimi), atsumono (a warm dish), hashiyasume (a one-bite or one-shot palate cleanser), yakimono (a flame-grilled dish), gohan (a rice dish) and finally a dessert. Dishes from the current menu include deep-fried soba

Yoshinori Ishii is the UK’s principle advocate of Japan’s ikejime fish preservation technique, which sees fish humanely killed immediately after being caught by severing the spinal cord. This prevents the fish from panicking, which can negatively affect eating quality, especially if it is to be consumed raw

When Yoshinori Ishii first lifted the lid of Umu’s sushi counter he got a bit of shock. Spoilt by high-quality, sushi-grade fish in his native Japan and also New York – where chefs can get catch flown in direct from Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market – London’s offering simply didn’t pass muster. “The shellfish and tuna was great but the rest wasn’t suitable for high-end Japanese food. UK markets tend to hold on to fish until it can be sold at a higher price. So on these shores fish that’s sold as ‘fresh’ has actually been caught five or six days before delivery. If you’re serving fish raw, this is not OK,” says Ishii with uncharacteristic bluntness.

Freshness was only half the problem. As Ishii saw it, the fish was not being handled properly after being caught. Most fish caught in Japan are subject to the ikejime fish preservation technique – a method of paralysing fish by inserting a spike behind the eye, causing immediate brain death. When done correctly, the fins flare once and the fish instantly relaxes. Movement of the fish’s muscles is undesirable immediately before and after death because it produces lactic acid, which many believe makes the fish sour, reduces umami flavours and spoils faster.

Ikejime fish is then drained of its blood, which further increases eating quality and the length of time a fish can be stored. Contrary to popular belief, some varieties of fish are best served a few days after being caught. Not all food experts are willing to get behind ikejime, arguing that there are other ways to drain a fish of its blood and that the technique yields very little difference in eating quality if the fish is to be cooked.

On discovering that the fish available to him did not meet his standards, Ishii sent out a hundred or so carefully handwritten letters to fish suppliers explaining the problem, his solution and asking if they thought they could help. Not a single person replied. Unperturbed, Ishii – a highly skilled and experienced

fisherman in his own right – went to the source and eventually found a group of Cornish fishermen willing to work with him.

“I went out on the boats and demonstrated the technique to some fishermen in Coverack Bay [on the Lizard Peninsula]. Luckily most of them got it and agreed to help. We are now able to request a small number of ikejime fish,” says Ishii, who agreed to pay 1.5 times the market rate in order to seal the deal. “I’m also very aware that each fisherman has their own way of doing things and that this needs to be respected. Some aren’t willing to work with me and that’s fine.”

In a side-by-side taste test, sashimi made with ikejime fish has a brighter, more saline taste and a lot more bite. But the reception to ikejime at Umu was mixed. Some customers didn’t immediately take to the firmer texture because westerners tend to associate a yielding tenderness with freshness and quality, whereas in the east, it’s normally the opposite for seafood. “It’s entirely understandable and I’d never hold it against anyone. It’s just a cultural thing. Some people complained it was too chewy so I went over and showed them difference between ikejime and normal fish, and most people understood straight away,” explains Ishii, who now slices some of his sashimi marginally thinner than he would in Japan to reduce the likelihood of new customers struggling with the texture.

He takes his status as the technique’s primary ambassador in the UK seriously, describing ikejime as his life’s work. “It’s not just the quality. There is an important sustainability angle too. Fish handled in this way are less likely to be damaged because fishermen need to carefully handle each one. And, because they’re drained of blood, they’ll last longer.” Currently Umu is the only restaurant in the UK offering UK-caught ikejime fish but Ishii is hopeful that more chefs will follow his lead.  

懐石国王 A good clean death

Catch of the day: only high-quality ingredients make the grade

Fishing skills: Ishii demonstrates the

ikejime method

A cut above: raw fish sashimi

UMU

theworlds50best.com | restaurant | February 2015 | 41

noodles with grilled crosnes (Chinese artichoke), enoki mushrooms, salsify and yuba sauce; red deer tataki with truffle and wasabi; and rice with clams, ginger and seaweed sauce accompanied by red miso soup and pickles.

Umu is a very different restaurant now to what it was when Ishii arrived in 2010. The restaurant has always placed the emphasis firmly on authenticity and carefully sourced ingredients (the name translates as ‘born of nature’) but when it opened in 2004, the majority of its ingredients were flown in from Japan.

Ishii has overseen a switch to UK produce and – in some cases, at least – has gone to astonishing lengths to ensure quality. In Abela’s view, his work with Cornish fishermen on the ikejime fish preservation technique (see A good clean death) sets Umu apart from its competition in the high-end Japanese space.

“A central aspect of Umu’s success is its ingredients. I realise a lot of chefs and restaurateurs have the same rhetoric but what we do is quite different. Ikejime is probably the best example. There is nobody else serving fish handled in this manner in the UK,” says Abela, who also owns two Michelin star-rated Mayfair restaurant The Greenhouse. “We also try to avoid middle men where possible. Increasingly we’re dealing with the producer directly.”

Fish and fishing have been an important part of Ishii’s life since his early teens. Indeed, his decision to learn how to cook and become a chef was largely driven by the desire to handle his catch with skill and respect. Fishing paraphernalia lines the walls of his flat. There are rods, antique fishing reels and a huge embalmed trout takes pride of place above his mantelpiece.

As Umu started to switch to UK produce, Ishii made, at the time, a highly controversial decision to remove some more far-flung fish from the menu, including Japanese restaurant classic black cod, which is normally sourced from in and around the Pacific. Even more bravely, he replaced them with lesser-known UK-caught fish, including the flamboyantly coloured cuckoo wrasse, a fish

almost entirely ignored by his peers. Now only a handful of species – including tuna, which isn’t found in UK waters – are sourced from foreign seas.

Abela and Ishii first met in the US. Following his long stint at Kyoto Kitcho, Ishii had been working for the Japanese ambassador to the UN in Geneva. When his employer was reassigned to New York, Ishii followed him over with plans to open his own restaurant. Green Card complications required him to seek work, and Ishii ended up on the payroll of famous Japanese chef Masaharu Morimoto at his eponymous restaurant in Chelsea.

The pair hit it off immediately. “I already knew he could cook because he was running the omakase bar at Marimoto but it turned out our culinary philosophy was completely aligned,” Abela recalls. “He cooked for me in my London flat, which sealed the deal. He made something extraordinary with a piece of very high quality veal I happened to have in the fridge, even though he’d never cooked with it before.”

Ishii and Abela have been on the hunt for a New York location for Umu and say they have visited more than 100 potential sites.

“We’re quite particular. It’s hard because there’s no equivalent to the back streets of Mayfair in New York. We’ve looked Uptown, Downtown, Midtown and in all the villages but nothing has been quite right yet,” says Abela, who already operates several venues in the US including Italian restaurant A Voce, which has two locations in Manhattan.

If and when a second Umu opens, Ishii, whose wife currently lives in New York, will split his time equally between the US and the UK. While this might cut into his artistic endeavours a little, one suspects Ishii will find a way to keep both restaurants in tune with one another and well-stocked with his handiwork.

懐石国王What we do is quite

different. There is nobody else serving fish handled in this manner in the UK

Fukiyose: crispy root vegetables on aWelsh slate plate