Traditionally, kaiseki is a multi-course prefixed dinner.
It is based off of different cooking techniques, and it originated from the Buddhist monasteries,
but has evolved with time to two different types of dinners.
The original one is a vegetarian base.
It's very simple.
It celebrates like a tea ceremony, whereas the newer version of it is, they call it a
banquet style type of dining, and it's more elaborate, more sophisticated in ways that
they're using a lot more complex ingredients.
Our take on kaiseki is, we call it the modern kaiseki, because traditional kaiseki, I feel
that it's a lot more limiting in terms of seasoning and the things that we're allowed
to use, not so much allowed to use, but the flavorings have to be purely Japanese in style,
Japanese taste, Japanese flavors, Japanese seasonings.
There's no use of other ingredients that may be outside of that.
So for us to do a modern take on it means we're allowed to be a little bit more flexible
with our ingredients.
I like to think of kaiseki as the philosophy of itself is using local ingredients.
What is closest to you, what represents your area the best, and how to use those ingredients
that, using cooking methods, that best showcase these ingredients.
When I think of kaiseki for us, of course we're going to base a lot of it with California
ingredients, California vegetables.
For example, we use uni from Santa Barbara, a sweet shrimp from Santa Barbara, we use
abalone from the Monterey Bay.
Things of such that are representative of what is local to us.
So we take the philosophy of kaiseki, but we don't do it in the way that, oh, we're
doing a Japanese kaiseki, we're doing kaiseki, yes, we're doing all the ideas of kaiseki,
but within our environment, that is what we're doing at Enonca.
I think when we create a menu, we have to think about it in terms of the whole menu.
I don't believe that every dish should be a dish that has a wow factor of 10.
Everything should taste good, but there should be a flow that it should be subtle.
Some dishes subtle, some dishes more elaborate, some dishes more subdued.
So we're not eating on volume 10 every single dish, but it's a flow, like when we think
about a dish, for example, you've just had something fried, it was salty in nature.
The next dish that we would want to serve you is something soft, something a little
bit more sweet.
The textural difference between the previous dish, and then when we think of that, we think
of the dish that was before that and the dish that's after that.
So it's consistently connecting every dish to each other without it being overbearing
on our guests.
So if you had a dish that was completely repetitive in flavor and texture, on and on and on and
on, I believe that that would make somebody tired of eating because it is such a long
course.
We have to be thoughtful throughout the process.
One of my favorite parts of what we do is the plating aspect of it.
There's no rules about it, which I think is wonderful.
A lot of it is based on feeling.
It's not something that I've thought through.
A lot of times I think about things, it's like, oh, that's a great idea, but then when
you actually try it, it doesn't always work out the way I thought about it.
But I might be doing something that feels right.
That's going to work.
And then put it together and allow, just allow that space to be crazy and try it.
A lot of times that works a lot better.
