[Pigging by Wilfrid: March 8, 2010]
The name of Kajitsu, the East Village kaiseki yearling, means something like "festive day," so a natural choice for a birthday celebration, and a healthy one too.
Shojin ryori, my research suggests, is devotional Buddhist cuisine - cooking in the cause of enlightenment - which in Kajitsu's terms cashes out as about as indulgent a meal as you can get while disdaining animal products. Far from a handful of rice, this food is borderline luxurious.
Lights are bright, decoration sparse - a pot her, a petal there - and tables are hewn from single pieces of tree trunk. Savory dishes are presented on a corrugated tray, which you could pick up and play as a washboard for entertainment I suppose. The first titbit was warm, which surprised me, and introduced one of the two recurring textures of the dinner - soft and custardy. In this case, the soft scoop was a delicate white turnip purée served over slices of avocado with tiny, almost undetectable slivers of celery for crunch. Another recurring theme, a dribble of miso or something like it to add umami.
A modern kaiseki meal, as I understand it, reflects seasonality. This puzzled me a little, as there's not much in season locally other than apples and roots. I mean - avocado? But perhaps it's more a state of mind. In any case, the Kajitsu menu changes monthly. The next dish brought the first of many ingredients I needed to look up. Mugwort, I had though, was a character in Harry Potter. Well, it's either a herb or an invasive weed depending how you feel about it, and it was a component here in a clear broth bathing a sticky rice ball. The second textural theme - stretchy/rubbery - introduced itself with a slice of mochi (glutinous rice) draped over the crunchy rice ball.
The rice theme was continued by a side dish of rice crackers - presumably made in house as they were unusually good.
I'd have called the package which arrived on the next plate a "beggar's purse," but the wrapper is not a won ton but tofu skin, neatly tied with another herb I didn't recognize around a filling of shiitake mushrooms and glass noodles. It leaned casually against a baton of broccoli rabe. Another delicious custardy customer in a cup alongside. Tofu? You might think so, but no: gomadofu. No soy beans were injured in the making of this light paste, which is actually based on sesame seeds. Someone had troubled to slice each sweet "English" pea (hardly in season) in half for the garnish.
Kajitsu offers a choice of two menus. The $50 kaze features four savory dishes; the $70 hana adds two more (and tea and dessert), one of which is the gomadofu, and the other the handmade soba noodles. I am no noodle maven, but these seemed good enough - firm but not chewy - and even better when messily dipped into the dipping sauce thick with tiny scallion tempura as well as bamboo shoots and season with kuro-schichimi, a black pepper/spice mix.
The most dramatic plate, and a positive museum of flavors and textures, was curiously described on the menu as "warm spring vegetables with bagna cauda." I suppose the latter just means "hot bath," and I suppose that refers to the cup of first rate layered custards - cauliflower, heart of palm and onion with a shiso sauce. This was worth spooning down on its own, but you could also dip delicately prepared young vegetables and leaves - half a tiny squash, an exquisite slice of oyster mushroom, and so on.
Rubbery/stretchy also made a big contribution here in the form of two cubes of seared rice gluten. Taffee-like in texture, or maybe like resistant marshmallows, these certainly added ballast to the plate, the flavor coming mainly from marinated black trompette mushrooms used as a garnish. Just to throw you, what appeared to be a third rice cube was actually a cube of pumpkin. I like this sort of plate - it reminded me, perhaps inaptly, of Richard Neat's great pig's head plate at Pied-à-Terre in London many years ago, or more recently Gregory Pugin's rabbit terrine plate at Veritas. Plates with many different and tasty things to explore.
Honestly, my belt was stretching at this point - unusually so for a non-meat dinner (yes, it happens at Pure Food and Wine, but that's sometimes just gas). Almost a surprise that they intended to feed us another substantial savory portion. Steamed rice, this time, and wonderfully gooey, streaked with yellowfoot mushrooms. The pickles on the side included dark pieces of nori which had been streaked in something which produced the same effect - in my mouth anyway - as sichuan pepper; an unpleasant numbness. I am sensitive to that, and it was the only component of this dinner I backed away from.
Relief arrived in the form of a light - and, yes, rubbery/stretchy - dessert. Basil mochi, this time, with a raspberry on top (in season? really?), sesame cream and walnuts lurking within.
And I wasn't sure whether the tiny candies which came with the tea were to be eaten or stirred into it. This was matcha tea (finely milled green tea, it says here) and my first reaction was to back away from this too. Perhaps it was the color, but the first sip reminded me of a wheatgrass shot, one of the nastiest things designed to be put in someone's mouth. After I calmed down and adjusted my expectations, it was fine.
The restaurant's strength in the beverage department is sake, predictably enough, and pairings are offered with the menus - but there are also reasonably priced wines around the $45 to $55 mark, which implies a check leaning towards $100 per person - not excessive these days for the equivalent of a lengthy tasting menu, booze included.
A relaxing experience, sweet service, and a welcome change of pace from the braised then deep-fried half-a-pig which challenges your digestion in most new Manhattan restaurants these days.
Here's the website.
