Brick and Wood: New Japanese Kaiseki

One evening at the bar, between the eighth and ninth course, Brick and Wood owner Kevin Yang slid out three surprise dishes alongside seven slices of marbled steak: ponzu sauce with daikon, machatea salt, and black truffle salt. “This is how we roll here,” he quipped in explanation of the truffled extravagance.

How exactly do they roll? With ardor and ebullience. Brick and Wood serves out of the highly structured tradition of kaiseki, a culinary scaffold emphasizing a meticulousness to seasonality and context of each meal of which only the Japanese are capable. But despite its seeming rigidity, this is the jazz of cuisines. The menu is unwritten; you entrus tyourself to the kitchen with varying degrees of faith – RMB 380, RMB 500, RMB 1,000 – and then, the sky is the limit.

The architecture of a kaiseki supper hangs on two undebatable points – the soup (suimono) and rice (shokuji) courses – with detailed outlining of the others, but improvisation is encouraged. The chef is a magnetic presence with laughter and red wine hanging in the airbetween courses, and, in collusion with the animated Yang, he orchestrates an operatic journey.

Translucent panes of octopus lead into a delicate duckbroth, a curl of lemon peel and a lashing of green onion attuning the palate to the lightness of fish and richness of simmered meat. A brilliant needlefish carpaccio bathed in a surprising chili sauce introduces and counter-weights melt-away chicken stewed with yam, taro and amulets oflotus root. Things plunge to more delicious, meditative depths – day-long, slow-cooked pork spooning a potato half-dome; fried soft-shell crab on a lattice work of miso mayonnaise – with occasional breezier moments of pristine sashimi or an implausibly airy snapper, marinated,braised, then fried.

Each movement of the meal may dip and rise but an impish note runs throughout the evening. Not even the requisite rice course is left untouched. “It’s shabu-sotto,”Yang proclaims as he transforms the shabu-shabu remains into an ultra-rich, modernist risotto with egg and sprinklings of black truffle salt before topping it with caviar.

Brick and Wood
Daily 6pm-late. 14 Qianliang Hutong, DongchengDistrict (186 1270 8750)
东城区钱粮胡同14号
400m north of Dongsi station (Lines 5 and 6)

Also try: Kaden Minokichi, Okra

A version of this article appears in the January 2014 issue of the Beijinger

Photo: Ken