After seven years away, we finally made it back to Japan for a visit.
While we were in Tokyo, my husband and I were invited to dinner at the home of our longtime family friends, the N family.
Before our visit, N asked me what I would like to eat. My answer came without hesitation: Japanese food!
N is also a sake lover, so shortly afterwards I received another message asking what kind of sake I preferred. Needless to say, I made sure to let her know.
When we arrived that evening, her kitchen was already filled with an incredible array of dishes.
It was the first time I had seen her kitchen in seven years, and she had renovated it beautifully to suit her style. With all the food lined up and ready to be served, it almost looked like the kitchen of a small restaurant.
N has always been an exceptionally good cook. Perhaps her love of both wine and sake has something to do with it, but she is equally accomplished at Japanese and Western cooking.
For our dinner, she had ordered a beautiful selection of sashimi from the fishmonger she regularly uses.
And apart from this magnificent sashimi platter, everything else on the table was homemade.
Her cooking is refined without ever being fussy, with the kind of flavors you could happily eat again and again. You can tell that each dish has been prepared thoughtfully and with care.
Dish after dish appeared on the table, from small individual servings to generous platters meant for sharing.
Another thing I have always enjoyed at N’s home is her collection of tableware. Every plate and little bowl is beautiful, and she has such a wonderful eye for pairing each dish with just the right piece. I always find myself noticing not only what she has cooked, but how she has arranged it and what she has chosen to serve it in.
Over the years, I have actually learned a great deal from N in the kitchen. Our cooking styles are quite different, but perhaps that is partly why I find her approach so interesting. I pick up ideas from the way she presents food, how she uses different plates and bowls, and the little techniques she uses when putting a dish together.
One of those techniques has stayed with me in particular. N once taught me that when making a salad, rather than dressing all the ingredients together at once, she first seasons one of the vegetables well with the dressing before adding and combining the remaining ingredients. It is a small detail, but it can make such a difference, and it is something I have incorporated into my own cooking ever since.
That is one of the things I enjoy about N’s food. We may cook very different kinds of dishes, but there is always something I can learn from the way she cooks.
One of my special requests that evening was her lotus root salad.
Lotus root is not something I often come across in Europe or Dubai, so it has become quite a treat for me. I love its distinctive crisp texture, and I have always loved N’s salad so much that whenever there were leftovers in the past, I would happily take them home with me—my own little doggy bag!
Towards the end of the meal, she also served a chilled pork shabu-shabu salad.
Pork is something we do not have many opportunities to eat in Dubai, so dishes like this feel like a real treat whenever I am back in Japan.
N had also selected two bottles of sake specifically to accompany the meal. The second was a sparkling sake, which she suggested we pair with the pork shabu-shabu salad.
It was my first time trying sparkling sake. It had a wonderfully fresh, clean taste, with bubbles that were much more subtle than I had expected, and it paired beautifully with the salad.
Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a photo of either bottle. Apparently I was far too busy eating, drinking and talking!
I first met N through the ballet school our daughters attended in Tokyo. Like us, N and her husband have two daughters, and it was our eldest daughters being in the same ballet class that initially brought us together.
In the early days, after ballet lessons, N would sometimes invite several of the mothers and children back to her home. Over time, we began visiting each other’s homes more regularly, our husbands joined in, and before we knew it, what had started as a friendship between two mothers had grown into a friendship between two families.
Although our children were not all in the same school year, whenever we got together they would happily play together.
And, of course, one of the reasons our children always looked forward to going to N’s house was the food.
I still remember a lasagna she once made with spinach and enormous shiitake mushrooms. Our eldest daughter took one bite and declared it “the best lasagna in the world!”
I recently came across this old photograph of that very lasagna, and it brought back so many memories of the meals we shared around their table. My husband was equally enthusiastic about N’s cooking and would praise it every time we visited.
Our friendship may have begun through our daughters’ ballet classes, but it has continued long after we moved overseas. Over the years, we have shared meals together in Berlin and Dubai, and now, after seven years, once again in Tokyo.
Although we live far apart these days and cannot see one another very often, whenever we do meet, being together still feels completely natural. And somehow, wherever we happen to be—Tokyo, Berlin or Dubai—food has always been part of the way our two families reconnect.
Perhaps that is why this particular dinner felt so special. After seven years away from Japan, we were sitting around the table of old friends again, enjoying so many of the foods I had missed: beautiful sashimi, carefully prepared vegetables, my favorite lotus root salad, pork shabu-shabu and sake chosen especially for the meal.
We ate, drank and talked until the evening seemed to disappear far too quickly.
To return to Japan after so long and be welcomed with such warmth was something I truly appreciated. But what I will remember just as much as the food itself is the pleasure of being back around N’s table—admiring her cooking and beautiful tableware, picking up yet another idea or two along the way, and simply enjoying a meal together as we have done so many times over the years.
Thank you to N, her husband and their daughters for such a lovely evening—and to N for another truly memorable meal.❤️
