But I who decide nothing am too often amazed,
and I should have known that window,
so vividly half sky, half slate,
was yours: since all I have left are these paler things
no one else calls love. Pardon, my mistake.
- James Richardson
June 01, 2011
In 2010, I embarked on an absurd mission to review every single NYC eatery I visited, courtesy of the website Yelp. Ten months into the project, I stopped.
I returned in mid-2011 with this review.
* * * * *
How do you say goodbye?
I knew something was special about her when we first met over pho in the Bronx, of all places -- what a start that was! Later, we shared dim sum in Chinatown, sul long tang in Flushing, pad see ew in Elmhurst... Some of the most authentic meals available in a city with no shortage of competition.
And now, she was leaving NYC. One last supper.
I wanted to honor her with an exclamation point, one for the road. We were far past the point of me feeling the need to impress. Thus, Yasuda, 15 East: ethereal, but maybe too reverential for a send-off meant to be full of warmth. In fact, serious sushi at all was risky -- she would've been happy with simplicity, hominess.
But Kanoyama was serious sushi with a difference. I'd once been a random walk-in at the omakase counter. The chef, Nobu-san, apologized for the poorness of the day's catch. Apologized! He then proceeded to blow me away. Not just with the food, but with the geniality he and my server Taku showed me. Rarely had I had such delicacy delivered with such warmth.
It was that quality I hoped for again as I spirited my convive away from the desperately youthful energy of the East Village on a Saturday night. No main dining room for us: I'd eaten there too, and the regular-table delay between sushi making and consumption disturbed the equilibrium between rice and fish, turning the exquisite into the merely noteworthy. Instead, we settled at the dark-wooded omakase counter. Taku instantly remembered me from my visit 6 months prior. Chef Nobu-san quickly followed and effortlessly and efficiently prepared our first dish.
Kanoyama's super omakase starts with appetizers. You may just want to mainline nigiri, but consider this: a square of grated mountain yam topped with an okra puree, surrounded by cool dashi flecked with wasabi and junsai. The slick chill of the junsai (an aquatic root with an intoxicating texture) melded with the smooth yam, cleansing and eye-opening. My convive looked up at me after one bite, surprised delight in her eyes, and I looked right back with a faintly smug expression. "What did I tell you?"
A blizzard of appetizers followed. Uni reclining on tofu and vinegar gelatin. Duo-toned noodles in a bracing ume-infused broth. A light sashimi course, including tiny whole cuttlefish and a gloriously marinated tuna. A bonito soup bathing some sort of fish -- I wasn't even listening by then, instead sneaking glances in my convive's direction, tracking her "oohs", her "mmms". And her intimations of getting filled up. I turned to Nobu-san and cried, "So much wonderful food, but you're getting us full before we've even had any sushi!"
"One more, one more," he said, bashful yet assured. He then placed a single piece of asparagus on each of our plates. What an elegant moment, following the fireworks with something so simple. Merely kissed by oil and dusted with green tea salt, shining a lustrous green, it entered my convive's mouth. Her voice instantly dropped an octave. "This... is a good asparagus," she breathed.
We asked where the asparagus was from. "New Jersey," he said, cracking open the cedar bucket holding the sushi rice. What's past is prologue, right? A slice of the knife, a scoop of the hand, a twist of the arm, and there it was: a glistening piece of fluke bedded on a bolus of rice. He handed it *directly* into my convive's hand. "I'll wait for you," she said.
My eyes widened like saucers. "NO. EAT NOW."
She did, her eyes shutting involuntarily in pure pleasure. As I would find out seconds later with my own piece, that fluke nigiri, so often a boring fish, shocked with its lucidity, and with the calibrated texture of the rice that I thought I'd overdreamed but hadn't, and my God, this was a *gift*, and I looked at Nobu-san and couldn't even say anything, and he smiled generously back at me, calm and unerring.
What followed was a fever dream of nigiri. Red snapper dissolved before it even hit the throat. Shima-aji, delicate and decadent. Squid, firm yet yielding. Horse mackerel: uncured, oily, sublime. A brush of soy sauce here, a pinch of shiso there, perfect grace notes. Two large live shrimp, killed in front of us, and not in vain, their flesh evanescent as summer twilight. A bamboo-leaf package held a Chilean trout nigiri; how was it prepared? The trout was screamingly raw, but the rice had taken on the leaf's aroma, a fascinating combination. I'm forgetting things. Uni. Toro.
Never mind the details. After all, dining perfection -- that alchemical mix of food, company, setting -- happens in spite of one's plans, not because of them. But for one special convive, I wanted our last hours together to be charmed, indelible. Food is the only way I know how. It can express emotions my clumsy words never could. When the end was nigh, my convive and I shared a look, and I knew: Kanoyama spoke for me when I needed it to most.
Gochisosama-deshita.
Probability of return within 1 year: I don't know.