Kitsune has been busy since it opened about a month ago, in a tiny, triangle-shaped building in North Center. It's focus? Thoughtful plates of Japanese food, influenced by Midwestern ingredients and seasons.
[Ads /]
"Just really kind of discovering the nuances of the flavors from that and using the most seasonal things we can," said Chef and Owner Iliana Regan.
Regan spends a fair amount of time in the basement, burying vegetables to transform them.
"So those are buried in rice bran. We toast it with a little bit of sake and season it with kombu and then we bury those, the rice bran, the yeast in that feeds off the sugars and they essentially take about a day and they pickle," she said.
You'd expect to see pickles on a Japanese menu, but bread?
"We wanted it to be a mix of some things that were traditional, some things that were inspiration...and so what we did was make a koji porridge and we incorporate that into the bread," she said.
So Japanese technique with Midwestern flour. The A5 Wagyu is as Japanese as you can get. The fatty-rich block is seared in a hot skillet, dusted with some dashi powder, then sliced and plated with a mushroom miso paste. A pure expression of Osaka arrives in the form of okonomiyaki - a cabbage pancake that's garnished traditionally, with some kewpie mayo, some sweet okonomiyaki sauce and some finely-shredded whisps of katsuobushi, the ever-present smoked and dried tuna you see all over a Japanese kitchen.
[Ads /]
"But again we're incorporating our winter vegetables, so we have a little bit of leek and cabbage and bok choy right now," Regan said.
So Kitsune is not 100% Japanese authentic. There are clearly Midwestern influences here, and that means there are things that tie those two cultures together - mainly, fermentation and pickling.
In this week's online only Extra Course, Steve Dolinsky talks about one of the restaurant's truly unique donuts, made with a Japanese whiskey glaze.
Kitsune
4229 N. Lincoln Ave.
http://www.kitsunerestaurant.com/