The chef’s tasting course allows the diner to indulge in bountiful seafood, starting with an appetizer, then two fish dishes, a lidded bowl dish, sashimi, and a fried dish. A small rice or noodle dish called oshinogi precedes a grilled dish. Next is a refreshing palate cleanser called hashiyasume, followed by a steamed dish, four filling rice or noodle dishes, and finally, sweets. The menu composition and recipes are created every morning during Fujioka’s 40-minute drive to collect ingredients. He imagines dishes as he heads out to the port and fields, then the recipes take true shape once he has the day’s ingredients and is on the road back to the restaurant again.

Impossibly fresh seafood includes aji horse mackerel, caught that morning and brought into Ogawa Port. It is prepared simply with Himalayan salt and served with soy-dressed green sticky leaves of the moroheiya plant. Saba mackerel is served sashimi style, pressed with salt and vinegar from Sugii Shuzo sake brewery, whose signature is Suginishiki. Another premium item is amadai tilefish – the chef’s signature. But because the fish is line-caught, it is not always available, and you should count yourself lucky if you time it right. The tilefish is prepared using a method called matsukasayaki, in which the skin side is grilled over Kishu Bichotan charcoals to crisp the edible scales before dousing them with hot oil. The plump, silky flesh that has been gently heated as the scales were crisped rests in umami-rich dashi extracted from the tilefish bones.

A little-known and often cast-off fish called datsu becomes something quite exquisite with the chef’s skills. The fish undergoes shinkeijime treatment to retain ultimate freshness, and it is served tied in a knot alongside maitake in a Wajima-nuri lacquerware lidded bowl from the Meiji Period.

Another signature of the chef is oil-steamed kinmedai, splendid alfonsino fish with a texture you will never forget. The exquisite use of oil and steam produces springy flesh that breaks off in delicate pieces with chopsticks. It feels like a confit but with a boost of umami and flavor like soy sauce simmered fish. One of the closing dishes is a delicious bowl of ramen often made with Amagi Shamo chicken but reinvented with chashu seasoned pork belly when the restaurant takes delivery of wild boar.

Wishing guests to also indulge in aromas, for the interim rice dish, Chef Fujioka roasts Fujieda-grown golden sesame seeds at the counter before grinding in a Japanese mortar called a suribachi. He uses a specially made ceramic mortar by Kasama, Ibaraki Prefecture artist Saori Yamazaki. Hints of the ingredient gradually spread as the sesame roasts, and the instant Fujioka starts massaging them with the Japanese pepper bush pestle, incredible aromas fill the entire space. The ground sesame is turned into a dressing and mixed with seasonal fruits or vegetables, like figs and green grapes.

INGREDIENTS
Only the best Shizuoka Prefecture ingredients make their way into Chef Fujioka’s creations. He uses seafood carefully selected by Naotaka Maeda of Sasue Maeda Sakanaten. The rice is of the Kinumusume varietal, all grown in Shizuoka by a farmer named Matsushita, who is well known for cultivating the sakamai rice used to make the famed sake brand Kikuyoi. The vegetables come from Kuwataka Noen in Yoshida Town, where the chef personally enters the plots and fields to harvest items of just the right size for his cuisine. Sesame is farmed in Fujieda, and vinegar comes from Sugii Shuzo, where Suginishiki sake is brewed. Even the katsuobushi bonito flakes are produced in Shizuoka from bonito line-caught and brought into Yaizu for processing. Fujioka favors the intensely aromatic Tebiyamashiki flakes prepared using techniques handed down since the Edo Period. Fujioka only veers from his Shizuoka fetish to create dashi, combining bonito flakes with kombu sourced from Rishiri in Hokkaido.