Azabu Muroi offers seasonal feasts of the best ingredients available at that moment: bamboo shoots in spring, abalone and sea urchin in summer, matsutake mushrooms in autumn, and crab in winter. The delectable dishes, numbering twelve or thirteen, are presented in a typical kaiseki progression, starting with an appetizer like kombu-pressed Ise-ebi lobster served in an Eiraku antique dish with chargrilled matsutake and chrysanthemum greens and flowers, topped with citrus soy sauce. It flows through an array of mesmerizing mouthfuls until you reach dessert – homemade seasonal fruit-flavored ice cream and wagashi traditional Japanese sweets.

A sashimi tasting plate includes freshly caught pressed sea bream from Akashi and Mie Prefecture bigfin reef squid, served with Oogiichi brewed soy sauce from Tastuno, the home of usukuchi light soy sauce. The crystal-clear dashi used in the lidded bowl dish begins with Rishiri Kombu soaked in water for two days and finished with bonito flakes shaved from the light-flesh blocks from the dorsal side of a skipjack tuna. Its elegant flavor perfectly infuses the Korean daggertooth pike conger and Iwate Prefecture matsutake mushrooms. It soaks in and relaxes every inch of your body. The spiky shell of a Japanese blue crab is the vessel for generous portions of crab flesh and premium Yura sea urchin, topped with richly savory gelée made by extracting flavor from crab and kombu.

The chef’s traditional Japanese cuisine techniques bring out the best in the carefully chosen produce, many of which are further elevated by his masterful use of charcoal and firewood. The charcoal is Kishu Bichotan, known for its strong thermal power, and the firewood includes large logs of Naranoki and smaller pieces of cedar. Chef Muroi grills with charcoal for roasting just the skin of fish or cooking crab without interfering with the innate flavors. In contrast, he uses his wood-fired oven for beef and other proteins when he wants a tender, juicy result infused with wonderfully rich aromas. Muroi seasons the chateaubriand cut with a blend of four salts from France, China, Kiribati and America. Then, he serves it with a sauce incorporating a traditional fermented seasoning from Yamagata Prefecture called akegarashi. It is made from rice koji, mustard, unpasteurized soy sauce, chili peppers, hemp seeds and sugar.

The final dish before dessert is hot claypot cooked rice, perhaps topped with buttery chargrilled blackthroat seaperch and ikura salmon roe, glistening like jewels. The flavors go one step deeper with the finishing touch of woodsmoke oil.

The chef has a broad selection of sake varieties and a Burgundy-focused wine collection, and he is also happy to prepare a whisky highball, fruit liqueur, or other libations for guests.

INGREDIENTS
Dashi is fundamental to Japanese cuisine. At Aazbu Muroi, it is drawn from Rishiri Kombu from the cold waters of northwest Hokkaido and finished with light-flesh bonito flakes. Seafood is flown in fresh every day from Kyoto fishmonger Endo Shoten, whose shipments contain Akashi sea bream and sea urchin from Yura. Chef Muroi only uses premium chateaubriand cuts from female cattle. He sources matsutake mushrooms from Iwate Prefecture and wasabi from Gotemba.

For rice, the chef uses two varieties interchangeably depending on the dish. If serving plain white rice, he cooks up Koshihikari grains dried in the warm sunshine of Toyama Prefecture. He prefers a new varietal from Tottori Prefecture called Hoshizoramai for cooked rice dishes mixed with other ingredients. A descendant of Koshihikari, its grains with a touch of sweetness glisten beautifully with transparency, just like the starry night sky it is named after.