Restaurant review: Kaijitsu
This was going to be my last Vegan MoFo post, but I was lazy and didn’t post it in time and it’s now November! Oh well.
Kaijitsu is a vegan Japanese restaurant in New York. I’ll borrow the description from their website: “Kajitsu serves shojin cuisine, an ancient Japanese cuisine developed in Zen Buddhist monasteries. Following the Buddhist principle of not taking life, Shojin cuisine does not use meat or fish. Meals are prepared from fresh, in season vegetables, legumes, wild herbs, seeds and grains, chosen at the moment in the season that best reflects their flavor. At Kajitsu we make our delicious and wholesome dishes from high quality ingredients prepared with traditional Japanese culinary techniques.”
Our reservation was for 5:30pm since we had opera tickets for 8pm. We were seated in the back room and had the whole room to ourselves, which was really nice. The whole dinner took about two hours and consisted of eight courses. The menu is set, and there are two different options- “Kaze” which is four courses for $50, and “Hana” which is eight courses for $70. We opted for “Hana” plus the chef’s sake pairing.
The menu changes every month, and unfortunately I didn’t grab the October menu before they changed it. I’m going to email them to see if they’ll send it to me, but in the meantime I’ll try to describe the food the best I can. I didn’t get a picture of the first course, which was steamed taro served with nama-fu and I think some kind of grated Japanese citrus. Nama-fu is similar to seitan and is made from wheat gluten.
The soup was created in honor of the full moon on Oct. 4. I do know what it was called since I found a photo on the Kaijitsu website: “Steamed Tofu and Matsutake Mushrooms in a Clear Broth, White Mushrooms, Mitsuba.” The tofu was soft and smooth and the broth was delicate but flavorful. I had never had matsutake mushrooms before since they are quite expensive and not easy to find, but they had a very nice flavor. One of the things I loved about this dinner was how much attention was paid to the visual presentation of each dish. The soup was served in a beautiful lidded bowl with birds on it, which I loved.
Next up was an appetizer of crispy fried root vegetables and a cold edamame potage with a little grated bit of some kind of Japanese red pepper on top. There was one edamame hidden at the bottom of the potage.
Then came hand-pulled soba noodles, served with a soy dipping sauce with white scallion and wasabi. The waitress told us that since buckwheat is in season right now, the noodles contain the highest percentage of buckwheat at this time of the year. Since I’ve recently ventured into the realm of making pasta by hand, I’m wondering how hard it would be to make my own soba.
Then the main course- miso-grilled eggplant, matsutake mushrooms prepared two ways (tempura and sauteed), a salad of mixed greens, purple carrot, and red daikon, and a slice of a kind of Japanese citrus for squeezing over the tempura. The green cubes are another kind of nama-fu. The eggplant in particular was excellent. I loved the plate this was served on too.
Next, a bowl of perfectly cooked rice with chestnuts in it, served with two kind of house-made pickles and a little dish of roasted chopped chestnuts and macadamia nuts. This was a very simple but satisfying dish, perfect for cool fall weather.
At this point we were getting full, so we were glad to see dessert. I forget what it was exactly- something with more chestnuts and nuts, I think. It had some kind of special Japanese sugar sprinkled on top. I got a plum sake to go with it, and D. got some other kind which I forget the name of.
And last- a bowl of lovely matcha green tea and candies with red adzuki bean filling that are handmade in Tokyo for the restaurant.
Kaijitsu is definitely what I’d call an “experience” dinner, and it was a beautiful experience. It was the kind of meal that requires more from the diner than just mindlessly gulping down the food and filling up, since it was obvious that so much thought and care was put into the creation and presentation of each dish. It is definitely created with the principle of quality over quantity in mind, a lesson that I think American culture sorely needs to learn. I love that they create an entirely new menu each month and each menu reflects what is in season at the time. If I lived in New York and had lots of money, I’d be very tempted to go there every month just to see what all the new dishes were!