This spring I had a truly wonderful ayu (sweetfish) dish at Acqua Pazza, an Italian place in Hiroo. It was so exquisite that it stayed on my mind for ages. So I went looking for a place in Japan that does ayu really well, and learned there was one in Tsuwano, right on the banks of the Takatsu River, which is famous for its clear water and therefore yields the very best wild ayu. The owner’s younger brother opened a restaurant called Ayumasa in Tokyo, and it got even more famous this year after earning a Michelin star. Ayumasa has long been well known among Japanese gourmets, and when I found out there was an original restaurant it came from, I decided to take the chance and go myself. An 8-hour round-trip drive, mind you..
Hanging scroll
The room feels exactly like a hot-spring ryokan. When I asked, they said it used to be an inn, but because of various little problems -_- they gave up the lodging side and now go all in on the restaurant.
The table
The style is a bit old-fashioned, but it has its own charm. Countryside atmosphere.. I guess you could call it.
Delicacy: nigauruka
No need to think it over, straight into the course. It starts with a delicacy served in place of an appetizer, and the dish is a feast for the eyes first.
Lid off
Salted ayu innards. Slightly bitter.
Chopstick rest
Even the chopstick rest was pretty..
Sake cup
The sake was a local one with a lovely aroma. They said the cup was made from fragrant wood from Akita, so maybe that had something to do with it.
Tokkuri, the sake flask
Sake flasks are usually ceramic, but here they brought one made from the same fragrant wood as the cup. It’s an unusual shape: you press down on the top board and then pour. It holds more than it looks, and since aroma is the whole point of nihonshu anyway, it made the fragrance even richer, which I really liked.
Otsukuri: ayu arai, yakishimo-zukuri
Sashimi lightly seared over a flame. You eat it with scallions, dipped in wasabi soy sauce. It reminded me of hamo yubiki (blanched pike conger).
Owan: white miso soup
When the bowl is this pretty, lifting the lid gives you a little thrill. That’s something Western cuisine could learn from.
Here’s what’s inside.
A broth seasoned with white miso. The miso was a little sweet, but the soup had real depth.
Yakimono: ayu shioyaki
Finally, today’s main dish. The best way to eat ayu is shioyaki: lightly salted and grilled. It’s no exaggeration to say I drove 8 hours round trip just to eat this.
Picking one up
Itadakimasu! But it isn’t fatty. Of that complex, many-layered flavor that seems to span a whole universe of taste, which is what ayu is all about, the missing richness leaves something lacking. Maybe because it’s late summer.. A bit of a letdown.
The sauce
They said the sauce is made from water weeds picked from the riverbed. Simple, but it brings out the flavor of the ayu nicely.
Another try with a bigger one.
At this size it tasted somewhat better, but it definitely had less fat than the ayu I had in early spring. Still, I got to enjoy that complex ayu flavor, so I didn’t feel the trip was wasted..
Nimono: uruka nasu
Eggplant simmered with ayu innards and miso. Again, the joy of lifting the lid..
Open it up…
Very intense flavor.
Which is why rice comes on the side.
To mix in and eat..
Shiizakana: miso tsutsumi-yaki
Ayu cooked with a miso sauce stuffed inside.
Open it and this is what you get..
The miso was a bit sweet, but the flavor was rich.
Ayu sugata-zukuri
This time it comes as plain sashimi. Amazing how many dishes you can make from ayu alone.
Ayu rice
That just about wraps up the course, and it was time for the rice. The container is a bento box made from fragrant Akita wood. They said it’s made by bending thinly shaved wood, so it’s light but sturdy.
Inside
The best of the best.
Pickles
Neatly presented.
Dessert
Just a plum floating in ice water, simple to look at, but the taste was anything but simple.
Inside sits a big plum like this.
Sweet and tart flesh meets cold ice. An ideal Asian-style dessert. It was so good that it made me forgive everything about the ayu.
Inside the inn
It’s true it was a little shabby to call an inn. But I suppose that’s the homey charm of a country inn. The prices, on the other hand, weren’t very countryside..
Tsuwano scenery
The lady of the inn, in her kimono, kindly showed us the Takatsu River where the ayu are caught, and here she is heading back. Very memorable.
This is the Takatsu River.
The water is clear and clean, but can you really call it a river..
With the mountains behind..
Ducks floating around too.
They weren’t afraid of people at all. Very cute. I wanted to play with them a bit longer, but it was hot and I had more plans..
The village shrine
It’s a small village, but the shrine is very well kept. A bit surprising..
Village scenery
A really quiet village. It seems perfect for a hot-spring trip, but that wasn’t the main purpose this time, so I’ll hurry off to the next destination.
P.S. Trips like this for good food usually come with countless behind-the-scenes stories, and to be honest they’re often the real juice, far more fun than the food write-ups, but you can’t tell them online. That’s the limit of a blog, and I think offline activities fill that gap. In that sense, I’m planning to focus on offline stuff for a while ^_^