If your money is burning a hole in your pocket and you’re in Osaka, Japan, I have an idea for you. You’ll get hungry eventually in this city with a million food options, and I know just the thing for you. It’s called Kappo.
This blog is normally about down-scale traveling (I sleep in flophouses, after all) but sometimes you have to live large. I used to have quite the reputation among my friends for being rather the cheapskate, except for one category: food.
And wine. But let’s stick with food here.
Osaka, Japan has a form of high-end dining called Kappo. I’m capitalizing it, maybe just once. That’s the short form; long form is kappō-ryōri. Like what’s called kaiseki in Tokyo, Kappo is fine dining, a tasting menu by the chef in a series of many tiny courses. Read up on fine dining anywhere and they will all use similar phrases: the freshest ingredients, done by the season, elaborate presentation, shows off the skills of the chefs, a delicate balance of tastes and textures, plus it probably cleans your energy chakras and realigns your inner qi while restoring your mind and spirit. And it is very expensive. Kappo has all that.
Kappo supposedly means “cutting and cooking”. Clever of the Japanese to combine two meanings into one word, perhaps a portmanteau? The difference with kappo is instead of canonical restaurant tables, everyone sits at a counter wrapped around the open kitchen. There is only this, the chef’s table. It’s not like a sushi bar with coolers of raw fish in front of you, but a regular counter that lets you see everything being prepared. The staff is slicing, dicing, cutting and cooking (kappo!!) in front of you. They’ll hand you the food–no real waitstaff here–themselves.
You the diner need only choose the level of the meal; they’ll do the rest. No menus. With kappo, there’s no need to say “omakase”, meaning “I entrust”, the phrase used in Japan to leave your meal up to the chef. Here, it’s automatic. No need to read Japanese. Perhaps a list of the dishes is around, but it’s not a menu with choices.
Naniwa Kappo Kigawa, usually just called Kigawa, is a tiny restaurant a couple blocks south of the wildly crowded Dotonbori area in Osaka. It’s in a narrow pedestrian alley running east~west, surrounded by crowded shopping arcades but somehow the alley gives makes for a peaceful place. Just look for the alley that’s about a meter wide.
Kigawa is anything but unknown. Ruth Reichl has even written about it. Bourdain probably got drunk there, the wanker. But some pre-trip investigation convinced me it was the place to eat. The reason was it sounded wonderful. Chef Osamu Ueno commands five people, all men, in the kitchen. The one woman present that evening acted like a hostess, taking care of seating and getting the bill and, for me, being the translator. Her English was quite good though we struggled through some of the more esoteric culinary terms together.
And the meal begins
For any kappo, make reservations. Being the solitary traveler, I too often assume I can drop in anywhere and they’ll squeeze me in. Not always. Plus, this was Saturday night. When I entered Kigawa, it didn’t seem crowded. A man politely showed me the dining level choices. My credit card trembled with anticipation. ¥15,000 or ¥180,00 or ¥20,000, depending on the number and quality of dishes.
Being a solitary diner, I was taken care of, given some extra attention, but eh, not at first. Kigawa’s counter is on its main floor but it has an upstairs extension, and because of other people’s reservations, I was put upstairs. I urge you not to sit there. Don’t accept it. You don’t feel like you’re part of the party, and the service simply isn’t as good; it can’t be. Part of the idea of kappo is you’re in front of the open kitchen, interacting with the chef and so on. Not on the second-class second floor. For a time, I considered they had forgotten about me, and that my visit was a mistake. But excellence prevailed–as soon as a spot opened up downstairs, I was promoted there, and life was then easy.
My first four or five small courses were upstairs. A thin man was taking care of me and three other people there. The guy first asked if there was anything I didn’t eat. The chopsticks, I was sad to note, were of the wooden disposable type, but they were of a superb quality.
My chef, or perhaps minder, upstairs
(1) The first course was pea soup, and came almost immediately. Superb. Right off the mark, we’re in fifth gear. The tiny soup was intense and amazing. And too small. With most every course, especially in the beginning, you’ll want more food, but pace yourself. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I choose a sake, eventually having three different types, but most other people were drinking white wine.
(2) Next is a concoction made from mugwart and tofu paste sauce, with konjak, scallop, wolfberry, and cloud ear mushroom. (3) Then: artichoke vinegar puree over low-cooked shrimp, white asparagus and watercress, with a poached egg yolk.
It’s here I met Mariko, a kimono-clad woman who came to tell me they were moving me to the first floor in a little bit, and who would be my hostess for the remainder. The first three courses came quickly, prepared in advance surely, but the next ones were slower, and being upstairs, one feels ignored. Courses (2) and (3) also didn’t thrill me, feeling more like general composed salads. Nothing to do but drink more sake.
(4) My next course of sashimi redeemed the meal. The menu card said, “Kiwaga-style special sashimi with a different flavor in all.” Eight types sat before me, including sardine, tuna, and red snapper, all gorgeous, all with flavoring so I don’t have to dip it into anything. The sardine and tuna were amazing. I took my time eating this.
(5) Now a soup, in a very Japanese style this time. Black rockfish clear soup, bracken and kudzu, starch tofu, shitake, and koshiabura, which are wild plants. The broth was very light, without much flavor, a shame, but the plants were amazing. The tofu was green, with a texture like konyaku.
I’m downstairs now, with about ten other diners at the L-shaped counter, and life is better. Two other foreigners (both seriously underdressed), the rest Japanese. I can see the head chef, Osamu Ueno I presume, standing in the kitchen making sure things are okay. He’s not preparing food. He’s not talking either. Clad in a light green Japanese robe, he stands out among the five others, all wearing whites, all men. White robes, white pillbox hats, white ties even, tucked under the robes but visible at the top.
The “seasonal plate”
From now on, Mariko the hostess is explaining the plates to me as they arrive, such as (6) a “seasonal plate”, with four items: spring sea bream and leaf of cherry slush, tomato in hair crab and creamaise sauce, special tofu on the yuzu pepper miso, and deep-fried young sweetfish (ayu fish). The batter on the fish was like little pearls, amazing. The head chef was working now, slicing fish with a long, beautiful knife that I coveted. The next day I visited a knife specialty store and bought a similar one.
(7) Next to arrive is deep-fried fatsia sprouts, in a batter so thin and light it was clear. How wonderful life is sometimes. Now here is (8) cooked masu salmon, a long trail of it on a rectangle plate with a fried salmon skin chip stuck into a sauce blob made from mustard and egg yolk and vinegar. This and the next course were the only serious fish dishes of the evening, the only ones staring a larger piece of fish. The salmon should have blown me away all by itself, such high quality it should have been, but no, it wasn’t, and I question why they featured it.
(9) Here comes a wonderful fish, but I forgot to write down its description, so that’s lost, and what’s lost can never be regained. The fish was fried and served with green peas and dried konbu. This, along with the sashimi, was one of the most visually-appealing of the dishes, and made for a great photo. It’s followed by (10) a small bowl of chawanmushi, savory custard made with fish stock, one of my favorite Japanese dishes. The custard’s tactile sensation and its unami get to me. This one was fab, over the top good, just brilliant. It used firefly squid, whatever that is. A small fried item, the squid perhaps, lay on the top, and vegetable piece snuggled inside, something like a cucumber but harder. Celery root, perhaps. At the bottom was white gluten, looking like an egg yolk. My heart is singing.
Savory custard with firefly squid
(11) Next up is usually duck meat, but the chef is making me some abalone instead, Mariko tells me. I watch him cutting asparagus stalks to just the right length and arranging everything with cooked onion and alpine leek puree. A thick very dark sauce has an amazing taste, like crab innards. I ask, and it’s liver, with shoyu and mayo, neat. And one charred wonderful leaf on top, brilliant. The leek starch tastes like fish. The plate is great.
The chef and Mariko have well noticed my note-taking and photo habits for all the food, and ask if I’m a chef. No, no, a mere travel blogger, though I have worked in a few kitchens long ago. Mariko and I are chatting away, and I’m seriously enjoying this meal. Whether you speak Japanese or not, engaging with the chefs and staff seems to get you more respect and attention. And perhaps some abalone.
The abalone plate
Course number (12) was the first and only one where I had a choice, of four items, the last savory item before dessert starts rolling. I don’t recall all the items, but I choose rice with tofu sauce. Mariko is impressed, calling it the one most Japanese would choose. It has dashi sauce, but it’s jellied. Seaweed side of sumimomo, konbu, and pickles. I like this, but it is very Japanese, meaning the flavors are somewhat understated.
(13) Time for dessert. People have drifted away, and I’m becoming the lone diner again. Bavarian cream with dried fruits, which are strawberry, kiwi, and orange, with white sesame. I don’t remember much about this, but it seems gimmicky. (14) And finally: some green tea, with a handmade sweet make from yam, in the shape of a butterfly. A very simple ending. The tea is superb.
I’m the last diner to leave. Dinner lasted from 7:30 to 10:45. The Master himself and Mariko led me outside afterward. We might have talked about the blog thing again, but mostly they just wanted to thank me. The Master ducked inside to get me something, and due to his mannerism, for a minute I thought he would present me with some nice token. A charm perhaps, a bit of calligraphy. Naw, he’s just getting me a card, a postcard-sized memorabilia of the place, though it’s nice.
The question was always coming: Is it worth it? Or in Japanese, neuchi ga aru? How can food, a single meal, ever be worth this price? There’s no tipping in Japan, but there’s damn a service charge of 10% here, plus tax. Total price, with the sake, was ¥26,000. That’s $234 U.S. dollars, or €202 euros. Yike.
Yeah, it was worth it, though this affirmative answer required some contemplation. I had some of the finest Japanese food around, and (mostly) they took good care of me. But with the counter dining of kappo, one doesn’t receive the fawning of that a kanseki meal or other haute cuisine would feature. Sitting at a counter is much better than a table for a single diner, but no waitstaff also means little service, and service is a big part of fine dining.
The quality and the quantity, fourteen courses, of the food was amazing. A few items fell well short of wonderfulness, but one cannot expect fourteen courses without a few that simply don’t thrill.
What’s missing is an introduction. For a meal like this, you shouldn’t just sit down and start eating. There somehow wasn’t enough of a transition between the outside world, which should feel far, far away at this point, and the restaurant. There should be a speech, a presentation, a ritual, a small ceremony even. There should be a clear distinction from the outside to the inside. I guess I still want the formalness of the fine dining experience, and perhaps I’m not embracing the easy casualness of kappo.
Still, I bet there’s better kappo. There is certainly cheaper kappo, places that are only perhaps a third of that price, where you get a mere seven or so dishes. But I would look down on that now.
If you’re looking for more kappo choices in Osaka, I’ll refer you to this list.
If you need something to do on a rainy day in Osaka, or just want a very local experience, try my post on their covered arcades.
