Dec 28,2017
Dubbed The New Ultimate Breakfast, Hotel New Otani coffee shop and restaurant SATSUKI’s health- and fermented food-themed breakfast menu was introduced in 2016 to shift busy modern people’s mornings into the prime time. Items made with fermented ingredients feature heavily amongst the 180 or so menu items lining the eatery’s heaving counters. The buffet is jam-packed with wonderful ingredients and ideas, as well as the hotel’s fervent wish to serve the ultimate breakfast and give guests a healthy start to the day.
SATSUKI is bustling with people all drawn to the breakfast buffet, including many who are not staying at the Hotel New Otani. Not just overseas guests and health-conscious business people, but female guests and families, too. Once you learn about the ingredients, every detail of which has been meticulously considered, and tales of how the menu was developed by the Head Chef, you realize the breakfast well worth the effort to come for.
This time, we talk to Koide Hiroyuki-san, SATSUKI’s Head Chef. The veteran chef honed his skills at Tour d’Argent Paris, an esteemed French restaurant boasting a history of over 400 years. He became involved in the project to create The New Ultimate Breakfast on assuming the role of Head Chef at SATSUKI in 2015, and has lent his talents to menu development ever since.
“My goals are to help our guests become healthier, and to make Japanese ingredients more well known outside of Japan. Toward this, I looked to Japan’s traditional fermented foods. While people’s thinking about breakfast has been changing here in Japan in recent years, too, there has certainly been a trend toward focusing more on breakfast outside of Japan. It is not unheard of for overseas hotels to put on 7,000-yen per head breakfast buffets, and I was taken aback by the high grade of their lineups and the ingredients they use. When I considered the global standard, I realized our breakfast menu had room for improvement and set about elevating it.”
Koide Hiroyuki, Head Chef at SATSUKI
Amongst the large array of options are traditional Japanese breakfast options like nattō (fermented soy beans) and miso soup. They are all classics, but normally don’t play leading roles. At the New Ultimate Breakfast, however, they have been given uncommon attention.
For the nattō, a leading example from the Japan’s canon of fermented foods, every detail has been planned specifically by the Hotel New Otani, from the beans it is made from to the steaming and maturation times, to the sauce and the packaging.
“When we think about nattō, we think of Ibaraki and Mito, but we met a wonderful nattō craftsperson in Tochigi, so we developed our own original nattō with them. With its distinctive stickiness and aroma, international guests have tended to avoid nattō, but we reduced the viscosity by shortening the typical maturation period, making a nattō that is easy to eat. We use rather large domestic soy beans, so I believe guests are still be able to enjoy the usual mouthfeel and flavor of the beans.”
Some items from the Japanese breakfast menu
Certainly, the beans are a size you don’t come across often. They look like they’d be plump and satisfying in the mouth. But the thing that surprised me most was the plastic packaging, which at first glance looked like something you’d find at the supermarket. “We ordered the containers specially. The corrugated pattern on the bottom is designed to make it easier to mix the nattō and get the right level of stickiness.” Now that’s attention to detail!
The Hotel New Otani’s bespoke natto. The corrugated pattern on the bottom of the packaging is a feature!
The miso soup is a blend of red miso from Kakukyu, which was established in 1645, white miso from Shinshu and Saikyo miso from Kyoto. Kōji mirin (sweetened cooking sake) is used as an accent. The main dish, white rice*, uses organic Koshihikari rice, steamed with water from Kannon Onsen (hot spring) in Shimoda, Shizuoka. The umeboshi pickled plums, made using highest-grade Kishu Nanko Ume plums, are available in three varieties: plain and ginseng- and monk fruit-marinated. Nothing is left wanting, even with the accompaniments for rice, which are usually supporting actors.
* In addition to Koshihikari, other rice options are J Cereal, the Hotel New Otani’s own blend of eight cereals and rice, and okayu (rice porridge).
The large variety of accompaniments for rice
The buffet offers not only Japanese breakfast options, but western ones as well. The smoked salmon, in particular, is another of the fermented foods that SATSUKI takes pride in.
“We have it smoked by an artisan smoker in Yamaguchi Prefecture after it’s marinated it in our own original marinade. Taking around three weeks to make, we impart it with the maximum moisture possible using the power of fermentation, which results in a fresh-tasting smoked salmon.”
The colorful vegetables accompanying the smoked salmon are harvested from fields reserved for the Hotel New Otani, where special care is taken with the soil
Head Chef Koide is as exacting with the ingredients for the non-fermented menu items. The ever-popular egg is served seven ways. Low-fat, vitamin E-rich Genmai Eggs, which are laid by chickens fed pesticide-free brown rice, are cooked a myriad of ways in omelets, scrambled eggs and the like. There’s a whole array of Genmai Egg omelets alone, featuring your choice of ham, cheese, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs and more. They look whiter and more elegant than regular omelets, making them delightful just to look at.
And let’s not forget yogurt, the quintessential fermented food. While you’ll often see a yogurt bar at a buffet, SATSUKI’s is something quite else.
“The Greek yogurt we added to the menu recently is thick and tastes like cream. I recommend having it with our luscious syrup, which is a reduction of ripe apples. You can only get it here. There’s also an array of superfood toppings, from quinoa to tiger nuts.”
The yogurt bar is laden with a variety of fruits
The menu is very mindful of superfoods and other trends popularized by international celebrities and other health-conscious people. It’s perfectly matched by three types of fermented drink made with such ingredients as vinegar and rice kōji (malted rice).
From fruit to nuts, there’s an entire array of toppings. The three fermented drinks are shown at the back
There are so many drink options, it’s hard to choose. There are five choices of milk alone
Not to be missed by bakery and dessert lovers, the patisserie counter features three varieties of viennoiserie (breakfast pastries, particularly those made from puff pastry) from the Pierre Hermé Paris patisserie located within the hotel. The first Pierre Hermé bakery to be opened outside of France, the Hotel New Otani store is famous for its sweets, but you’ll only find the special viennoiserie at SATSUKI’s breakfast buffet, so do check them out.
The patisserie counter. Naturally, there are a variety of other breads as well
Honestly, the truth is that there are just too many special things about the ingredients and menu items to capture them all here. Even Head Chef Koide smiles wryly: “We can’t fit all the explanations on the food signs beside each item. There are so many details we take great pains with that it’s a shame we haven’t been able to convey them all. We say that there are 180 options, but there are probably far more than that now. We are always updating the menu so the number just keeps growing.” There are just too many options to eat it all in one visit, which is probably why the buffet has so many repeat customers. Even now, Head Chef Koide devotes himself completely to flying around the country in search of delicious ingredients and gathering information from producers. The New Ultimate Breakfast is updated every day in pursuit of health and fermentation.
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