The tea ceremony is a formal tea gathering where guests are served kaiseki (before tea food), koicha (strong tea), and then usucha (light tea). At HOSHINOYA Tokyo, this process is mirrored where a light meal and sake are served as the kaiseki, followed by a strong drink with main sweets, and a light drink with dry sweets. Fermented foods are used in all parts of the meal (shown in parentheses).
Example menu:
Light Meal: Tuna and Saffron Rice (Soy Sauce Koji), Eel and Taro Terrine (Aged Sake Lees), Spring Vegetable and Kelp Jellied Terrine (Roasted Sake), Shrimp and Bouillabaisse Rice (Kapi)
Main Sweets: Red Bean Millefeuille (Fermented Adzuki Beans), Cherry Blossom Religieuse (Fermented Butter), Edo Miso Macaron (Edo Miso), Strawberry and Pistachio Fraisier (Lait Ribot), Shonan Gold Puits d’Amour (Fermented Ginger Syrup)
Dry Sweets: Cherry Mousse (Cherry Liqueur), Mugwort Opera (Fermented Tea), Kuromoji Tea Chocolate Sandwich (Chocolate), Kumquat and Chocolate Mousse (Yuzu Enzyme Syrup), Japanese Citrus Tart Citron (Fermented Lemon), Amazon Cacao Rakugan (Cacao)
The main element of the tea ceremony is the koicha (strong drink), which is served in a French press, inspired by the traditional style of drinking thickly whisked green matcha tea from a single bowl that is passed around. The coffee used has been carefully selected in collaboration with Sarutahiko Coffee (owned by Tomoyuki Otsuka), a company that our executive chef believes offers the best coffee for French press brewing. It is a blend of beans that have been carefully selected and roasted. It has a fruity aroma, reminiscent of strawberries, to match the light flavors of citrus and cherry blossom in the main sweets. In addition, an anaerobic process is used to ferment the coffee beans to enhance the pairing with the fermented ingredients. The light meal is paired with a sake that complements the seasonal ingredients, while umber tea is paired with dried sweets.
In HOSHINOYA Tokyo’s modern yet traditional tatami room, the staff will serve drinks according to the flow of a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. The container used to serve the afternoon tea treats is an original lacquer box, exclusive to HOSHINOYA Tokyo, designed in the image of the Tamamushi Shrine of Horyuji Temple, an important relic for understanding ancient Japanese architecture. This lacquer meal box, or ‘oju’, has been used since the Edo period as a vessel for serving banquet dishes.
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