In the South in the 1800s, Reconstruction brought people growth and peace; in New York in the 2000s, it’s bringing us goat cheese breaded in hijinki.
Komegashi, a new restaurant on Broadway between 21st and 22nd streets located in the 4,000-square-foot former home of a 19th-century cafeteria, serves up what looks like Japanese food prepared with a twist: The miso soup is served foamy in a small espresso cup; the sushi is prepared with lots of different kinds of fish spread over a tobiko film on one long and thin bed of rice, garnished with jellied cubes of soy sauce.
You might feel the urge to call this “fusion” cuisine … but, according to the cooks, you’d be wrong.
Insisting that they’ve created a menu that can’t be categorized by any pre-existing definitions, the owners have coined a brand-new term for their French/Japanese melange: reconstruction cuisine. And it doesn’t involve fried chicken or grits.
It does, however, involve soba noodles paired with duck comfit, foie gras served with teriyaki chicken, and croque monsieurs topped with Japanese curry.
With new restaurants popping up every day in New York, the effort to differentiate one from all the others can become overwhelming for a restaurateur.
In this case, creating a complex thesis to go with the food in order attract intellectual eaters maybe isn’t unlike an ice cream parlor attracting kids by giving out balloons.
But the latter is a gesture easier to understand.
The inside cover of the Komegashi menu reads: “In the eighth century, Zen Buddhism was introduced to Japan. Its concepts of simplicity and refined elegance combined with the culinary history of the Shinto religion are not only the backbone of Japanese cuisine, but also the catalyst of the steady evolution to this day of reconstructed cuisine. Our quest is to redefine Japanese cuisine through the rediscovery of tradition and reconstruct its flavors with French culinary techniques.” Huh?
In the end, the food tastes great and looks exciting – the pairings of ingredients create colorful dishes, with ingredients often stacked architecturally. But ultimately it’s your tongue that decides whether or not a dish is successful, so its debatable whether or not an entire manifesto is needed in order to convey the meaning behind each bite.
The brainchild of Hong Kong-born, New Jersey-bred restaurateur Johnny Leung, Komegashi is the third restaurant he’s opened with its name in the area.
One Komegashi was opened in 1990 and serves traditional food; the other opened in 2000 and specializes in Korean-Japanese-Thai fusion food.
But this Komegashi is exponentially more glamorous than its predecessors. The fish is flown in from Japan; the lamb, from Colorado; the shrimp, from Maine. The menu is set up like a book, with courses divided into “Prologue,” “Chapter 1,” “Chapter 2” and “Conclusion” instead of the more basic “entree” and “dessert.” Skewers, one of the featured elements in this dining experience aren’t called “skewers” when you order them. They’re called “moments.”
Meanwhile, $1.5 million was put into renovating the space, which was designed by Jun Aizaki, a young designer formerly of the Rockwell Group. It’s grand yet cozy, with cedar-decorated walls, long tables, intimate cabana-like booths and little surprising touches, like massive close-up photos of flowers in the bathrooms and super powerful Japanese electric hand dryers. The floor is decorated with the boxy Japanese character for rice, which happened coincidentally – when the old flooring was torn up, pre-World War II decorative swastikas were found to be the tile motif. Aizaki suggested that in order to not have to redo the whole floor, they just remove four tiles from each pattern to alter the design.
The trick reflected the overall spirit of innovation that the owners were aiming to express.
Executive chef Tom Kurokawa first started experimenting with blending cuisines when he worked as a chef at the Resort International in the ’70s . “The VIP clientele would want us to use Asian methods to prepare food. So, we’d do things like serve grilled seafood with miso paste.”
Now this has translated into pairing more complex ingredients and cooking methods.
“We’re creating new dishes while paying homage to the classics,” says sous-chef Akihiro Moroto. “Take our ‘Tofu Blanc Manger.’ Blanc Manger is usually a French pastry made with almond milk set with gelatin. We borrowed that idea, but instead use the French technique to make tofu, and then serve it with foamed soy and crystallized sheets of dehydrated bonito shavings.
“Or, take the ‘Terrine of Foie Gras and Teriyaki Chicken.’ We reinvented common, inexpensive teriyaki chicken by adding to it foie gras, which is rich.” There are two food trends that resemble the “reconstruction” style that Komegashi is trying to promote: the aforementioned “fusion,” which is a blending of two different styles of food or cooking (i.e., a tempura peanut butter and jelly sandwich), and “deconstruction,” which is reducing a dish to its basics and then altering it slightly (i.e., two pieces of bread iced with jelly and then sprinkled with peanuts).
But, according to Gourmet magazine Senior Food Editor Kemp Minifie, “someone could just as easily call what they’re doing at Komegashi ‘deconstruction’ or ‘intelligent fusion.’ I can see the desire to want to separate yourself from the term ‘fusion,’ which is kind of a tired term, but it comes across as trying awfully hard,” she says. “Same thing with the menu and its chapters and all. The language can take away from what you’re eating. I don’t need a novel or fancy words. I just need good food.”
When culinary indecision sets in, just say ‘fusion!’
He wants French, she wants Chinese – fortunately there are multiple restaurants that will satisfy both yens at once. In our melting-pot city, it’s not hard to find a restaurant that uses foods and techniques from two or more cuisines to create one menu. Here are some places experimenting with mixing culinary traditions from around the world.
Le Colonial: French/Vietnamese
An old hotspot that has cooled in recent years, Le Colonial still has elegant, expatriate charm and a formidable French/Vietnamese menu. Mixed dishes include shrimp beignets filled with pork and served with orange-ginger dipping sauce, and grilled beef brochette with five spices over angel-hair noodles. Dessert options include a mango sundae and Asian tartuffo. 149 East 57th St., (212) 752-0808.
Asia de Cuba: Cuban/Asian
Located in the Morgans Hotel, the always-hip Asia de Cuba has a large menu. Some of the goodies to be discovered include lobster pot-stickers, coconut conch ceviche, roasted lime and garlic duck, and char sui beef short ribs. It’s expensive, but loyal clientele seem to agree it’s well worth the price. 237 Madison between 37th and 38th streets, (212) 726-7755.
Bright Food Shop: Mexican/Asian
This Chelsea eatery, stepsister of the Mexican/Asian takeaway Kitchen Market next door, isn’t much to look at and the service can be inconsistent, but they have interesting Mexican/Asian dishes, like the smoked-salmon maki with wasabi cream cheese, and scrambled eggs wrapped in a nori-lined tortilla for brunch, or the “corner quesadilla” with roasted sweet potatoes, cheddar, charred tomatoes and gingered mustard greens served with smoked tofu for dinner. Every meal ends with a fortune cookie. 218 Eighth Ave. at 21st Street, (212) 243-4433.
Sushi Samba: Peruvian/Japanese/Brazilian
A restaurant chain with an omnipresent crowd of twenty-something business types wafting through, Sushi Samba’s two NYC locations are bright and cheery destinations with a huge array of creative dishes that make disparate ingredients seem natural when placed together, like yellowtail, jalapeno and lemon grass (the yellowtail sashimi tiradito) or spiced peaches with plantains and duck confit (the Hudson Valley foie gras) or soba noodles with chicken and grapefruit and shimeji mushrooms (the Samba soba). The cocktails, which range from punches to sakes to caipirinhas are both clever and tasty. Sushi Samba Park, 245 Park Ave. South, (212) 475-9377; Sushi Samba 7, 87 Seventh Ave., 212-691-7885.Vong: French/Thai
Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s restaurant devoted to “Thai-Inspired French cuisine,” Vong was designed by David Rockwell and is full of silks and red-lacquer and even has a Buddha alter. With branches all over the world, this Vong serves up an array of fusion favorites, from pork satay with papaya salad to spiced cod with curried artichokes. 200 East 54th St., (212) 486-9592.