Food: Wakuriya recalls Kyoto

(Bret Putnam/Special to The Examiner)

While a trip to Kyoto, Japan, may be out of the picture right now, a drive to the Crystal Springs Village Shopping Center in San Mateo can get you astoundingly close.

In a small space with an open kitchen, a counter and a few walnut tables and chairs, Kyoto-trained chefs Katsushiro Yamasake and Mika Matsuda construct a single set of kaiseki dishes each night.  All the visual and tactile details — antique lacquerware place settings,  breathtakingly thin hand-blown sake glasses, cool-slate walls, warm wooden floors, narrow, hanging Japanese lamps and artisanal ceramics — collaborate to create an exquisitely harmonious experience.

Start with a little glass of sweet plum wine or chilled sake from a list organized by an ingenious chart showing gradients from dry to full-bodied. Personally, I gravitate toward the light-bodied and dry sakes in the lower right-hand corner.

Winter meals begin dramatically with a miniature cast-iron frying pan of sizzling sesame tofu in dashi (the classic Japanese broth of dried bonito and seaweed), garnished with fresh wasabi. The creaminess of the tofu suggested ripe cheese.

Zensai (appetizers) awaken the palate. Take a few sparkly bites each of seared scallop salad with fuji apple and arugula sprouts;  miniscule shimeji mushrooms with minced celery root in tofu dressing wayed against meaty grilled eel rolls; and sweetly braised kurobuta pork with white sweet potato.

The quiet flavors of chawan mushi, a steamed custard topped with a luxurious dollop of sea-urchin roe, soothed the palate while engaging the eye with a startlingly bright green layer of chrysanthemum flower sauce pulsing in a covered, etched glass cup. Impeccable sashimi — a growingly rare and expensive treat — included pearly tai snapper, two kinds of tuna and shimaji, a silky bonito.

Agemono — the deep-fried dish — arrived hidden, like a gift, in a covered bowl. A fried-chicken dumpling, tiny tempura beans and slices of meltingly tender kabocha squash sat on top of a pool of sweetened dashi broth that served as a dipping sauce.

Just as my appetite flagged, along came a juicy, invigorating, unsweetened nigori sake gelatin with cranberries — a stunning and effective palate cleanser.  This prepared me for my own mini-oval Le Creuset pot of nabe, a luscious Japanese stew of buttery, salmonlike Tasmanian sea trout with tofu, cabbage and viscous mountain potato, in a clear miso broth. The stew was mild and clean, but rich.

After all of this, the last course somehow tasted the best — a soupy rice dish of egg and snow crab with a silky texture, presented in a deep crackle-glazed ceramic bowl. Pickles came on the side.

Pastry chef Matsuda’s finale, a strawberry encased in mochi (barely sweetened, pounded sticky rice) on custard cream with Okinawan black-sugar syrup — molasseslike in appearance but nutty and caramelly in flavor — next to a square of creamy green-tea mousse with smartly balanced astringency and sweetness, was brilliant — exactly what we wanted at the end of this meal.

Kaiseki was originally linked to the tea ceremony. As adapted by restaurants like Wakuriya, the ritual still resonates by adhering to the traditional progression of the courses and celebrating seasonality.

Yamasaki, who formerly cooked at Kaygetsu in Menlo Park, and his team create a poetic experience at the table inspired by Kyoto but distinctively rooted right here in the Bay Area.

Patricia Unterman is author of the “San Francisco Food Lovers’ Pocket Guide” and a newsletter, “Unterman on Food.” Contact her at pattiu@concentric.net.

Wakuriya

Location: Crystal Springs Village Shopping Center, 115 De Anza Blvd., San Mateo
Contact: (650) 286-0410; www.wakuriya.com
Hours: 5:30 to 9 p.m., Tuesdays through Sundays
Price range: $50 to $85
Recommended dishes: The monthly changing kaiseki meal
Credit cards: American Express, Visa, MasterCard
Reservations: “Strongly” recommended, starting Jan. 16