Kyoto Duck-Filled Dreams
By Elliot Peters
I sat at the table with a sheepish grin smeared across my face. A grin of pure joy I could not pry off had I decided I wanted to. I best equate the feeling to being newly in love. You smile even when there's no one around to witness because you can't help it. You feel a warm tender sense of joy that starts in your heart spreading and piercing through your skin displaying itself across your whole body. This is the beauty I felt when my meal at Lès Creations de Narisawa was over. I was overcome with a euphoric lifted high despite not having consumed more than a single flute of champagne given at the beginning of my meal. Food has the ability to move the soul. This is something I have been aware of since food became my every waking moment but, I had yet to find it much outside my grandmother's kitchen. The gift Yoshiharu Narisawa has is a truly incredible talent. He marries nature, nuance and immaculate execution of beautiful ingredients into a display of true gastronomic excellence. Each dish was a beautiful moment plucked from the Satoyama scenery. It truly felt as though that exact moment was placed on the plate in front of me as it wanted to be displayed.
One of his signature dishes is literally boiled mountain soil, strained and served as chilled soup with a raw oyster at the bottom. It tasted as though it was salted and peppered and seasoned into a delicate broth. There was no seasoning but soil and oyster I was told. My favorite dish was an ever so lightly cooked langoustine in the half shell, served with fresh peas and chives in a “pork and chicken essence” broth. I have no idea how the master at work distilled such immaculate flavor into his essence broth. My tastebuds were overwhelmed with umami leaving me craving it to this day like an addict. I can still taste it perfectly when I close my eyes and picture the dish. The main course was a Kyoto duck breast cooked on a mesh rack by slowly ladling a perfectly temperature controlled seasoned oil over top. The process takes upwards of twenty minutes per duck. The skin crisp and snappy atop a juicy rare slice of duck breast left my mouth in shock. The pure flavor of exquisite duck un-bastardized by anything else rang out clear as day. The dish was incredibly simple again, showcasing the true nature of the ingredients and cooking technique. The dishes at Narisawa have a special ability to transport you from your seats at the table to the moment in time the ingredients were harvested in the countryside.
I yearned for the mountains of Kanagawa or the farmlands of Kyoto. With each bite I felt as if I learned something new about the way food can compose itself into a symphony when conducted by a genius mind. I remember each dish with pure clarity and doubt anything could scrub these moments from my memory. The restaurant forces you to surrender yourself to the vast and beautiful country of Japan and accepts you into its mountain streams and luscious green field harboring Kobe beef and Kyoto Duck-filled dreams.