Tokyo Cuisine: The Past, Part 3

This is the third installment on the media event entitled “A Journey to Unravel Tokyo’s Diverse Food and Spirit,” organized by the Tokyo Food Promotion 2024 Executive Committee and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. This week I will report on what was cooking—and still is today—during the Edo Period. Chef Akihiko Murata, the owner of Suzunari, a Michelin star holder for six years straight, cooked a number of dishes and used a few implements commonly employed during that period.

Chef Murata’s menu consisted of white rice, Hachihai Tofu, Toza Buri Iriyaki, and Natto Soup. All of the dishes appear in the photograph, and each had its attractive aspect. However, I will focus on the Natto Soup. We at drinkingjapan.org have written about natto more than once on this blog. As our readers will know, we have a very high opinion of the beans. What impressed me about the chef’s soup was its creamy mouthfeel, the result of submitting it to some serious yet gentle mortar-and-pestle action. Edo Era style.

Aside from the period-piece grinder, Murata-san had two other devices that seemed to generate a good deal of interest among the journalists present—a porcelain rice cooker and a wooden-box-cum-plunger into which tofu can be placed and extruded in strips, a kind of bean-curd squirter, if you will.