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Shunju: New Japanese Cuisine
Winner of the 2004 James Beard Award for Best Photography!
This innovative Japanese cookbook takes you on a tour of the restaurants and philosophy at the forefront of the Japanese cooking revolution. Just as Alice Waters changed the way Americans thought about food, Takashi Sugimoto has revolutionized the act of dining in Japan.
New Japanese Cuisine brings you the experience of dining at Tokyo's most innovative and exciting Shunju. Everything about these restaurants is unique—their design, decoration, and lighting—but most especially the cuisine. At the Shunju restaurants the menu changes with the seasons and the specials change daily depending on what is available from the market. The chefs choose from hand-picked farmed and wild vegetables that arrive each morning. The food, though quintessentially Japanese, is fresh and innovative, with unexpected touches from other cuisines.
The restaurants' designs are modern, funky, and often quite bizarre. Sugimoto, the famed interior designer, has incorporated such unusual installations as original sidewalk gratings from the London subway and hand plastered mud walls. In this way, the designs represent the new lifestyle philosophy of Japan's urban, cultivated that within the chaotic city of modern design and Japanese food, more value should be placed on nature and time, on the textures of genuine materials, the flavors of natural foods.
Stunning photographs, shot on location throughout the four seasons, and modern Japanese recipes that are as beautiful in presentation as they are to taste, make New Japanese Cuisine a must for both professional chefs and dedicated amateurs.
Sections
This innovative Japanese cookbook takes you on a tour of the restaurants and philosophy at the forefront of the Japanese cooking revolution. Just as Alice Waters changed the way Americans thought about food, Takashi Sugimoto has revolutionized the act of dining in Japan.
New Japanese Cuisine brings you the experience of dining at Tokyo's most innovative and exciting Shunju. Everything about these restaurants is unique—their design, decoration, and lighting—but most especially the cuisine. At the Shunju restaurants the menu changes with the seasons and the specials change daily depending on what is available from the market. The chefs choose from hand-picked farmed and wild vegetables that arrive each morning. The food, though quintessentially Japanese, is fresh and innovative, with unexpected touches from other cuisines.
The restaurants' designs are modern, funky, and often quite bizarre. Sugimoto, the famed interior designer, has incorporated such unusual installations as original sidewalk gratings from the London subway and hand plastered mud walls. In this way, the designs represent the new lifestyle philosophy of Japan's urban, cultivated that within the chaotic city of modern design and Japanese food, more value should be placed on nature and time, on the textures of genuine materials, the flavors of natural foods.
Stunning photographs, shot on location throughout the four seasons, and modern Japanese recipes that are as beautiful in presentation as they are to taste, make New Japanese Cuisine a must for both professional chefs and dedicated amateurs.
Sections
Hardcover
First published December 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 5, 2007
I really enjoy the format of this book. It almost instills in one the sense of kaiseki cuisine but at the same time doesn't push it too much. Its an excellent book to get a good sense of the palatte of the japanese audience instead of everything being sushi!
December 31, 2010
The recipes, though complex, were fantastic! I loved the food photography, and all of the angles and lighting made all of the textures look so crisp and inviting...and appetizing! To cooks who love Japanese cuisine with a challenge, I would greatly recommend this.
March 16, 2007
I have more than 50 books on Japanese cuisine and this my most favorite; the recipes are extremely challenging, photography impressive and the writing is not too bad.
January 28, 2011
Incredibly beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews