NOUNIYELL Farm Restaurant: From Farm to Table, Table to Soil

NOUNIYELL is situated in the Farm area of Mie’s VISON retail complex. Drawing from the concept of rooting for the future of farming, the restaurant is run as a sustainable business to lessen its environmental impact. Its meals feature plenty of vegetables grown on the broad farmland behind the restaurant, and leftover skins and stems from its kitchen are returned back to the soil.

Supervising NOUNIYELL is Italian chef Okuda Masayuki, a pioneer in the Grow Local, Eat Local movement. For this piece, we talked with Kitamura Fuku, NOUNIYELL’s head chef, who was inspired to take up this career path by a talk given by Chef Okuda that she attended when in high school.

We want people to learn about sustainable agriculture through delicious, waste-free meals

Kitamura attended high school in her hometown of Taki. She had the chance to attend a talk by Chef Okuda as part of the activities of a cooking club she had joined. She was fascinated by his frank and genuine personality and by his ideas on ingredients and cooking. Inspired by his talk, she decided to pursue a career as a chef.

After graduating from high school, she took a job at a restaurant, supervised by Chef Okuda, at the Aqua Ignis hot springs resort at Yunoyama in Komono, Mie. After studying Chef Okuda’s cooking philosophy and how to make the most of ingredients both from Mie and from all over the country, she became the head chef of NOUNIYELL when it opened in 2021.

NOUNIYELL’s head chef Kitamura Fuku

NOUNIYELL practices sustainable agriculture. The aim of sustainable agriculture is to change fundamentally entrenched views about cooking ingredients, such as tossing out ingredients that have gone off or throwing away excess ingredients. The tenet of sustainable agriculture is instead to prepare just the food that is needed and to return what is not used to the land as fertilizer. Kitamura continues to work on finding the best Grow Local, Eat Local practices in parallel with her cooking responsibilities.

NOUNIYELL’s tagline — Farm to Table, Table to Soil
— is declared boldly on the restaurant’s exterior wall

“The concept of NOUNIYELL is to root or cheer for farming. Even as we serve Italian cuisine made with vegetables grown on our farm, one of our goals is to teach people about sustainable agriculture. Sustainable agriculture is about using what you have to avoid cutting down forests in search of fertile land or consuming large amounts of water and depleting resources.”

Goats are also raised at VISON’s Farm area, and visitors can experience feeding them

In addition to the restaurant’s push for Grow Local, Eat Local, such as using as many locally sourced vegetables as possible, especially those grown on its farm, it strives to conserve water resources by collecting and using rainwater.

NOUNIYELL’s popular collaborative menu items use ingredients from other VISON businesses

Kitamura decides on the day’s menu, with the exception of a few standard items, every morning after she has checked the taste of the freshly-harvested vegetables.

For instance, in May, she selects the sweetest and freshest vegetables for the day’s salad from leafy greens like spinach, green leaf lettuce, and mizuna mustard greens as well as from turnips, carrots, radishes, and snap peas. To deal with bitter or astringent-tasting vegetables, she preprocesses them as needed and then heats them to bring out their essential flavors for use as garnishes.

Kitamura happily describes the times where her chef sense is put to the test as being “lots of fun”.

“Chef Okuda gave me a valuable piece of advice: Use local ingredients for appetizers and mains and serve them with the experience and passion of a head chef. I never run out of ideas. I’m always thinking about whether this vegetable will go well with that kind of fish or whether I can make a salad from the leftover bits of the vegetables used in the bagna càuda.

“When I serve customers, I try to get them interested in the food and ingredients by not only describing the dishes but also briefly explaining to them which vegetables were picked in our fields.”

The menu features drinks also made from herbs and vegetables

One popular item on the breakfast menu is French toast topped with a generous helping of vegetables and served with dressing. Rather than being sweetened with sugar or honey, this French toast meal highlights the rich flavor of fresh vegetables and leaves a lasting impression with its innovative and striking taste.

The corn soup and vegetable juices also have a sense of being not your ordinary vegetables, as they retain some of the rough texture of coarse vegetables together with the vegetables’ rich umami flavor.

Another recommendation is the saké lees pizza, which showcases Kitamura’s attention to detail.

“The saké lees pizza came about after lots of experimentation because I wanted to make a pizza where even the dough itself was delicious. Our saké lees come from Imuraya at VISON, as a byproduct of the process of brewing Fukuwagura saké. We use the saké lees as yeast when baking the pizza dough. They make the dough rise easily and infuses it with a delicious aroma.

“The saké lees are normally thrown away, so by reusing them, we hope to encourage more of this kind of circular ecology and economy within VISON.”

The pizza dough’s chewy texture is irresistible

We want the NOUNIYELL experience to make people more aware of healthy, eco-friendly living

Another of NOUNIYELL’s attractions is being able to experience sustainable agriculture firsthand.

Kitamura hopes to gradually resume the restaurant’s outreach projects that have been suspended due to COVID-19. These include a lunch experience where customers enjoy an Italian meal made with vegetables they pick themselves, and a pickle-making class where participants pickle vegetables with vinegar and mirin rice wine sold at VISON.

“Our wish is customers will learn about the meaning and importance of sustainable agriculture by experiencing how to cook without wasting food and tasting the delicious vegetables we harvest. We are planning various events that we hope will increase the numbers of visitors to the area.

“We would be delighted if, thanks to their NOUNIYELL experience, more customers try to use food at home without wasting it and become more conscious of leading a healthy lifestyle.”