AKAI

Destination Restaurants is a gourmet guide that introduces to the world only 10 restaurants each year that have been selected by Japan’s top food professionals as “truly worth visiting”. This time, I visited a restaurant called AKAI, which has a restaurant in Miyajimaguchi, Hiroshima, selected as one of the 10 restaurants of 2022 in this gourmet guide.

The main reason this restaurant has caught the eye of top professionals is its insistence on bringing out the flavor of the ingredients at the ultimate level. The owner-chef, Kenji Akai, has a French background, but instead of using butter and sauces to add flavor like most French chefs, the menu is designed to highlight “only” the flavors of the ingredients by cutting out as much unnecessary flavor as possible.

What is such “subtractive” cuisine like? I was so curious that I reserved a table one month in advance of my visit to coincide with my planned stay in Hiroshima. I was excited from the moment I got the reservation, because this restaurant is so well-known that Japanese food professionals are taking notice of it and sending it overseas…

You will feel like a special guest… AKAI, an up-and-coming innovative fusion restaurant, is like this…

AKAI, introduced here, is a restaurant that opened in 2019 on a hill about an 8-minute walk from the JR Miyajimaguchi station. An 80-year-old old private house has been renovated for use as a restaurant, but only the entrance and seating area have actually been renovated, leaving the rest of the building largely untouched. There is not even a signboard to be seen along the route from the station, including the storefront. Without prior information, you may wonder, “Is this really a restaurant? Therefore, Google Maps or a car navigation system is a must for first-time visitors.

After taking off my shoes and entering the restaurant, I found a bright and clean dining space with pure white wallpaper. It has an open kitchen and only eight seats for customers along an L-shaped counter. The chef and two female staff members were running such a cozy restaurant. Although it is a high-end restaurant in terms of price, it feels very rustic and homey.

The menu is limited to the same courses for both lunch and dinner. The courses have a fixed starting time, and they all start at the same time, so don’t be late. The staff does not seem to be professionally trained and professional in the hospitality industry, so it is difficult for them to be as flexible as in a restaurant in the city center. But I was very happy to feel as if I was the only eight people being treated by the chef….

The “Ultimate Subtractive Cuisine” at Miyajima, one of the most popular sightseeing spots in Japan…AKAI’s 10-course meal served at dinner on a certain day

Let me introduce the 10 course meals I had at AKAI on that particular day. The course price for both lunch and dinner is 16,500 yen per person including tax (the price increases to 22,000 yen per person including tax only during the year-end and New Year holidays). There are no additional charges such as service fees, which are common in high-class restaurants, but only the cost of drinks ordered on the day is extra. On this particular day, I enjoyed my meal with a glass of sparkling water in my hand, but there is a wide selection of drinks, including sake and wine, available for pairing with the dishes, so please feel free to ask the chef or staff for more information.

Turnip and garland chrysanthemum soup

The first dish of the course was the most surprising menu item for me at AKAI that day, “turnip and garland chrysanthemum soup. What was so astonishing was that this soup was probably not even made from soup stock. I imagined that what was in this bowl was only turnips, garland chrysanthemum, and water (maybe a little bit of salt). In other words, it is the simplest dish of all, with turnips and garland chrysanthemum boiled almost entirely in water.

You are probably thinking to yourself, “Is a dish made that way really that good?” I am sure you are thinking to yourself, “Is such a dish really delicious? I understand that feeling. But, you know, it really tastes wonderful. The turnip is as soft as a boiled potato, the garland chrysanthemum is soft and lightly moist, and the extracts from both are blended into the water, making the soup light but with a taste that gradually touches the body and soul. The media often uses the expression “making the most of the flavors of the ingredients,” but if that is true, I have probably never encountered a dish that “makes the most of the flavors of the ingredients” to a greater extent than this one. No, I think it would be more appropriate to call it “making the best use of the ingredients,” or rather, “cooking food in which the ingredients’ flavors are presented in a direct and straightforward manner. Anyway, this soup is “exceptional” among the many dishes I have eaten so far.

Sashimi of yellowtail surgeonfish

The second dish is a sashimi of yellowtail surgeonfish caught on Etajima Island, Hiroshima. The fillet is covered with a sour gelée and served separately with a paste of carefully strained liver. The meat of the yellowtail filefish was plump and sweet. It was nice to eat the sashimi with the sticky, rich and tasty liver paste…

Taro Sake Lees Soup

The third dish is taro with sake lees soup. This sake lees soup is also quite lightly seasoned. And if you look closely, you can see fine yuzu peels floating in the sake lees soup. In addition to the sweetness of the kasu-jiru, the aroma of the yuzu peel wafted from my mouth to my nose… The delicate and gentle taste of the yuzu peel made me fall in love with the dish at first bite.

The taro floating in the center of the bowl, on the other hand, is not just a chunk of taro, but rather a piece that has been carefully strained, rolled into a dango shape, and then roasted until its surface is crispy. The fragile but crispy surface and the fine texture of the back-strained taro inside reminded me of something I don’t know what it is, but it reminded me of something purely Japanese. I bet it would be very delicious if I made ozoni with this kasu-jiru at New Year’s…

Steamed white sea bream with sake

The fourth dish was sake-steamed white sea bream, another high quality fish caught in Hiroshima. The fish is served in a black vinegar-based (?) broth with a hint of sourness. The fish is topped with Hiroshima herbs and white sesame seeds. The herbs had a strong coriander-like aroma, which might be a little harsh for those who do not like coriander.

Meatball (pork and duck thigh)

The fifth dish was a meat dish: Meatball made with sirloin pork and natural duck thigh. The meatball was very elastic and meaty. The rough minced meat also made me feel wild, and when I put a knife into it, the meat juices were flowing out of it.

The meatball was covered with a light sauce made from Iwakuni lotus root, but even without this sauce, you could eat it easily with just the rich flavor of the meat juices. Or perhaps the sauce was added to absorb the rich gravy and neutralize its flavor… AKAI aims for “not too much umami” flavor… Is it too much of a guess to think so?

Oysters from Etajima, Hiroshima

The sixth dish was the Etajima oyster, a must-try if you come to Hiroshima. Two plump oysters are placed in the center of a lightly seasoned soy sauce broth, topped with plenty of grated daikon, myoga, and scallions. This dish is a chopstick rest in the course. Rather than enjoying the milky flavor of the oysters, I had the impression that the grated Japanese radish and myoga gave the dish a piquant spiciness to reset the palate for the dishes to follow.

Char-grilled net-caught wild duck

The seventh dish was char-grilled wild duck caught in Kagoshima. After a long series of Japanese-style dishes, this was the first time the chef’s specialty, French-style cooking, was served. The dish was a standard combination of slowly char-grilled duck meat and red wine sauce. However, this red wine sauce was also relatively lightly seasoned, which was different from a typical French main dish.

The duck meat was also out of the ordinary. The meat was rare, but there was almost no charring on the skin. Therefore, there is no aroma of charbroiled duck, and the only thing that spreads in the mouth is the flavor of the meat. It may not be an appropriate expression, but I wondered if this is how carnivorous animals eat the meat of their prey…. This way of grilling is just awesome…

Japanese radish rice

The eighth dish was rice with daikon radish. The rice cooked in an earthenware pot has crispy grains and is cooked slightly hard and chewy. There were two kinds of daikon (Japanese radish), one that had been sauteed in advance and one that had been cooked with the rice, along with greens, yuzu peel, and white sesame seeds (quinoa?). The rice is served with a drizzle of Etajima olive oil on top of the rice.

I don’t know what it is about this daikon rice either, but it has a tremendous pulling power. It does not have a strong flavor, but rather, like the soup in the first dish, it is a boiled rice that consists almost entirely of the flavors of the ingredients (if I may say so, the olive oil makes it moist), but I do not know why I was irresistibly drawn to it, even as I write this blog entry. In fact, everyone, including other customers, had another bowl of daikon rice.

Yuzu sherbet

The ninth dish was a yuzu sherbet, one of the two desserts served. It was the smoothest sorbet I have ever experienced. It melted on my tongue and spread the flavor of yuzu, but it also had a richness like cheese…

Homemade pudding and coffee

The tenth and final item was homemade pudding and coffee. You can feel the texture quite hard at the spooning stage. The taste is the richest ever, the egg is rich, and the sweetness is quite strong, a change from the course meal before dessert.

Above, with a total of 10 dishes, my stay lasted a little over 2 hours. The experience was totally different from those at famous Italian and French restaurants in Japan that have strong brand power, but I personally had a very happy time. However, it is not a restaurant that offers dishes with a “clear flavor impact,” so there may be some people for whom that direction is not to their liking. Since you are paying a price comparable to a high-class restaurant in the city, you need to be aware of this point to avoid regrets.

If I may say so, I was a little (well, a lot) disappointed that most of the cooking was done in the back, out of sight. I would have liked to have been able to watch the chef actually cooking from my seat, since the kitchen is set up as a counter…

Online reservations via POCKET CONCIERGE are convenient… Access to AKAI is an 8-minute walk from the nearest station, Miyajima-guchi Station on the JR Sanyo Line.分

After reading this article, If you are interested in enjoying the ultimate subtractive cuisine at AKAI in Miyajima-guchi, Hiroshima, it is convenient to make a reservation online via POCKET CONCIERGE. If you make a reservation through POCKET CONCIERGE, not only the course fee but also the cost of drinks ordered on the day will be automatically deducted from your registered credit card, so there is (probably) no need to even bring your wallet to the restaurant on the day of your reservation. Why don’t you just concentrate on the food prepared by the chef and not think about the money? Below is the link to the reservation page in POCKET CONCIERGE, so feel free to use it if you like.

Now, here are the details of the restaurant. Restaurant data is here…