Saryo Tesshin

A rabbit has a tiger by the tail. There’s a great deal of gold leaf at Saryo Tesshin, but it’s the rabbit that holds the eye. Shinsuke Kawahara’s painting runs the length of the soba counter, below a timber ceiling that curves down to meet it. After dark, the room glows amber through the garden window, above a pond edged with broad, flat stones.

Then comes the Daigo soba. A fine grating of Parmigiano Reggiano dusts the buckwheat noodles. The yolk, once broken, runs down between the strands into the bonito broth, where beads of olive oil catch the light. Daigo was the name of a dairy preparation recorded in Heian-period Japan. The name is old Kyoto. The cheese is from Parma.

Satoshi Oda learned to make soba alongside his father at the family shop in Miyazaki. The Kyoto address comes from his mother’s side. She grew up in this townhouse, just south of the Imperial Palace grounds, and her father dyed lengths of cloth for kimono here. When Oda was advised to demolish the house, he had it repaired. The walls and counter are now faced with washi by the papermaker Wataru Hatano.

Before working with his father, Oda spent five years at Suetomi, the Kyoto confectioner. There’s still a little of the sweet shop in the way this kitchen works.