Culinary Journey to Toyama Prefecture
Greeting from Park Hyatt Tokyo Food & Beverage team.
This June, I together with Mr. Honda, Food ＆ Beverage Coordinator, and our purchasing manager Mr. Taguchi had the privilege to visit Toyama Prefecture, about two and a half hours from Tokyo by shinkansen, for a day trip.
Toyama bay is well-known in Japan for its fresh seafood but we wanted to discover something more than the famous Toyama fish market. The main reason of our visit was to discover and learn about the sake making process ahead of our one-off dinner collaboration event at New York Grill in October with IWA where we will pair their sake with some exclusive dishes.
From Toyama train station, we drove around 45 minutes out of the city to Shiraiwa Sake Brewery which is surrounded by mountains and rice fields. On the horizon, the Sea of Japan, mountains, land, villages, and the city were visible. A quintessential Japanese landscape melding industry and agriculture, urbanism and rurality, tradition and modernity, purity and hybridity.
At the brewery, we learned all stages of sake making where rice is polished, washed, soaked, steamed, cooled, mashed, fermented, and pressed. A miraculous transformation of solid into liquid, and cereal into alcohol. The assemblage by Richard Geoffroy, the master blender brings it all together to yield a unique taste and expression.
A sake absolutely true to sake, with its salient flow of sensations, yet embracing and expanded in character. A radiant sake. Such a paradoxical proposition cannot come from a single brew. It can only be achieved through assemblage, by design. Assemblage adds to the established paradigm of rice polishing. The more assembled, the more harmonious
For our special sake dinner, we wanted to use ingredients that are cultivated with care and that are ecofriendly near the brewery. We drove to Kurobe, a small town in the north of Toyama Prefecture to meet with Mrs. Yoshida and her seventy goats on her farm. From the goats’ milk, she makes goats cheese and yoghurt which we had the privilege to try. The farm was surrounded by nature between the sea and the mountains, a perfect climate for the herd who looked healthy and happy. We could feel Mrs. Yoshida’s spirit and affection towards them. I was convinced that the balance between the ecofriendly environment and the fresh grass that the goats were eating every day together with the meticulous care from Mrs. Yoshida would yield quality milk for her cheese and yogurt.
Her cheese is really unique in flavor, refreshing and more delicate than other goat cheeses. The other main ingredient sourced by Yoshida san is salt from the deep-sea water of Toyama Bay. The cheese is made without any food additives and is truly a blessing of nature in Kurobe.
We look forward to sharing both the cheese and IWA sake at the special dinner collaboration on October 4 and hope you can join.
Thibault Chiumenti Executive Chef – Park Hyatt Tokyo
