In the first of a 4-part video series co-produced by the MICHELIN Guide and Audi Japan, Motokazu Nakamura, the sixth-generation chef and owner of three-MICHELIN-starred Isshisoden Nakamura in Kyoto, Japan, tells us more how striking a balance between the bold and delicate is key in the pursuit of being a first-class chef - and how this ethos is mirrored by Audi’s progressive approach and attention to detail in the making of an Audi A8 car.
On a quiet autumn afternoon in Kyoto, Motokazu Nakamura is standing over a counter in the kitchen of his family restaurant, salting a guji fish, a local speciality.
Just like his ancestors have done before him — for 180 years since the restaurant’s founding — Nakamura has only two other ingredients on the table before him to prepare the fish with: salt and sake.
And the recipe, according to him? Salt the fish, leave it to rest, and bake it.
“That’s it. The point is to be careful about what is not in the recipe,” he says.
“In short, it is a dish that brings out the best using the least amount of ingredients. This is the essence of Kyoto cuisine.”
Nakamura should know. The 60-year-old is the 6th generation head chef and owner of Isshisoden Nakamura, a traditional kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto started by Nakamura’s ancestors, who served Kyoto's nobility and feudal lords.
Following the Japanese tradition of isshisoden, or the tightly kept transmission of the secrets of a craft from a father to only one son within the family, Nakamura started learning kaiseki cuisine from his father at the age of 24, right after graduation from university.
To prepare for the leadership succession, Nakamura also undertook an 18-month stint at Kyoto's Tenryuji, where he picked freshly harvested food from the fields he tended to daily.
“The most important thing I learned is what it means to eat and to live,” he shares.
“When you eat in a quiet place, your senses are focused, you can feel the sweetness of the ingredients, that you couldn't feel before, or the aroma that lies beneath it,” says Nakamura. “It's the kind of taste that you don't usually experience, or that would otherwise pass you by.”
“That is the kind of cuisine we are aiming for,” he states.
Under Nakamura’s leadership over the last three decades, the restaurant has retained its three-MICHELIN-starred status consecutively since 2011, and has come to be recognised worldwide as a beacon for Kyoto cuisine.
Like the Audi A8 car, which Nakamura describes as “sporty and stylish, yet stately and not so eccentric”, the bold and detailed co-exist — just as it does in his approach to cooking at Isshisoden Nakamura.
“We try to cut away the unnecessary as much as possible. The real goodness is at the heart of the product,” he observes. “Cooking has to be very bold. But, it must also be sensitive.”
He adds: “Boldness and delicacy. The ability to think this way is what is most important in becoming a first-class chef.”
