Behind the sushi bar, the cooks are rolling--snapping plastic wrap off their stock of hamachi and octopus arms, their inserts full of spicy tuna and ikura and amberjack. They're shuffling plates like card sharps working a deck, flexing their fingers and clearing orders with the machine precision of guys accustomed to their work and comfortable in it. They don't sweat. They don't rush. They barely look at what they're doing. And they work as though standing under a waterfall of sound--cool heroin jazz dripping from hidden speakers and slowly filling the room the way the customers do: a little at a time, coming and going, blending in like extra elements in the air.
Peter Mumford
With his emphasis on ippin, Hiro Kirita refuses to take the easy path to success.
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Chiso 3520 Fremont Ave. N., 632-3430, chisoseattle.com. Lunch: 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. Mon.–Fri. Dinner: 5:30–9:30 p.m. Mon.–Thurs., 5:30–10:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat., 5–9 p.m. Sun.
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At my table, I inhale the warm steam off a bowl of miso soup brought to me with no spoon. In one form or another, miso soup has been around for as long as there has been cuisine in Japan. It is a bedrock dish, a standardized preparation honed over centuries that nonetheless manages to be different in every dining room that serves it.
At Chiso, the ingredients are dashi, miso paste, spongy lumps of tofu, and small cubes of potato, because apparently it is still winter in the heart of whomever made the miso soup today. It is my first course, and I use it, as intended, as a kind of meditation—clearing my head, cleansing my palate, putting me in the proper state of mind for the ballet of courses to come.
But really, I'm using it as a shield to cover the smile I can't quite swallow. I might be pretending to be totally into my soup, wallowing in its salty goodness and using it to align my chi or whatever; but truthfully, I'm just trying not to laugh as I watch the complete crash-and-burn first date going on across the room from me.
I know it's wrong. I know that Japanese food is ascribed some kind of special role among foodistas as this ultimate expression of simplicity and seasonality and the focused calm of regimented dining. But for the most part, that's crap. In 99 restaurants out of 100, Japanese food—sushi in particular, and the ippin-style small plates and nibbles served at Chiso—has more in common with across-the-bar jalapeno poppers than it does with anything fine or upscale. Sushi is a cuisine of convenience developed in a place that had lots of fish, lots of rice, and not much else; originally served to shoppers, tradesmen, and construction workers from stands outside the walls of the Imperial city of Edo. It's fast food, elevated by an obsession with ingredients, freshness, and care, made special primarily by the insatiable American appetite for all things small, strange, and Asian.
Don't get me wrong: I love the stuff. And I can get all weighty and serious about it, too—talk about the thousand-year history of preserved fish; the careful balancing of sweet and savory and umami; the way the best sushi chefs in the world will make a hand-roll in which all the grains of rice point in the same direction.
But seriously? Watching the fast dissolution of young lust over some quick grub from a talented kitchen is just a lot more entertaining sometimes, like dinner and a show all in the same place. And as I get to the bottom of my bowl of miso soup and start picking up the soft potatoes with my chopsticks, I am reminded that this is why I like to eat alone. Were I with my wife or a bunch of people from the office, I might feel guilty about amusing myself with other people's heartbreak. I might feel obligated to talk about the weather or something.
Instead I get my own private soap opera, played out over sashimi and chirashi and cold bottles of Sapporo. And I don't feel bad about it at all.
Chiso opened in 2001 as the first expression of the style of Taichi Kitamura, a Japanese chef who'd done time at a few different notable local sushi joints (I Love Sushi and Shiro's, for example) before going his own way, finding a spot in the then still-gentrifying Fremont neighborhood and opening an authentically modern Japanese restaurant where he could, essentially, serve fish in a basement. Half a basement, anyway, one set below the sidewalk and offering excellent views of the ankles of those passing by above.
It worked. Chiso became popular, and for good reason. The space is cool and dim and sleek, done all in soft earth tones and steely grays. Kitamura then took a second space upstairs to open Chiso Kappo in 2007—Kappo being both the name of the restaurant and the style of cooking. Kappo was a much more intimate expression of Kitamura's style of cuisine: 10 seats, omakase only, a place where Kitamura cooked individually for customers who sat and watched him do it.
This worked for him for a while—right up until it didn't. Kappo closed in February, and Kitamura handed command of Chiso to his kitchen manager, Hiro Kirita, while he went looking for a new home for Kappo in Eastlake. Chiso continued, offering a diverse menu of sushi, sashimi, and small plates, as well as tempura, tonkatsu, warm bowls of miso soup, and mozuku seaweed salad with a sharp vinegar dressing.
