Tonari brings wafu Italian cooking to DC straight from Japan

WASHINGTON — Tonari, the most up-to-date cafe from the Daikaya Team, is on a mission. But its mission did not get started exactly where you might anticipate.

The folks behind Daikaya individual many ramen stores unfold out throughout the District, including its namesake ramen store (with Izakaya upstairs) Bantam King fried rooster and ramen, Hatoba and Haikan.

Tonari is suitable subsequent door to Daikaya, and all-around the corner from Bantam King. But for the group’s next act, they didn’t want to open up another ramen store.

To hear Daikaya co-owner Daisuke Utagawa clarify it, when they walked into the room that would come to be Tonari, they realized what they experienced to do.

The thought for Tonari is wafu Italian cuisine.

“The term wafu suggests Japanese-design,” Daisuke defined. “Normally it suggests something that is not initially Japanese that is done in Japanese style.”

Daisuke suggests Tonari’s wafu Italian is not a new style of delicacies, but it is a little something that is new to D.C., and new to the United States.

“Wafu Italian is not one thing we invented,” Daisuke explained. “It’s anything that exists in Japan, but it’s not very well-acknowledged outside the house of Japan.”

Daisuke stresses that wafu Italian is a coming-jointly of cultures, rather than what some could possibly phone “fusion.”

“I individually really do not like the term fusion,” he said. “Not because of what it suggests, but for the reason that of what the connotations are. There’s a difference amongst a purely natural cultural phenomenon of two matters assembly and becoming something, just about organically, vs . some thing which is place jointly by pressure.”

That’s the mission behind Tonari: To teach folks about the idea of wafu Italian delicacies. To exhibit the record of two cuisines that came alongside one another obviously above the system of decades in Japan.

Wafu pasta dates back to the ‘50s with a cafe whose identify interprets to “hole in the wall.” Daisuke reported the purpose that the use of Japanese components in Italian cooking took off in Japan is that the two cultures share a similar approach to delicacies.

So why bring that design and style of cooking to D.C. diners?

“Here’s a easy remedy for you,” Daisuke claims, gesturing to a enormous black pizza above at the center of the kitchen. “That oven.”

It was distinct to the Tonari crew that they needed to use that massive oven in some respect. That is the place the concept of wafu pizza and pasta was born. But when wafu pasta had roots and history guiding it, wafu pizza was something fully new, and a thing that Daisuke and his partner dove into headfirst. 

Acquiring presently recognized a ramen provider in Sapporo, Japan as a result of their other ventures, that provider instructed them they also make pasta, and that they tasted distinct from any other pasta they could get because of how they are manufactured.

“They have this ramen know-how and they used it to pasta, and it’s a entirely different point,” Daisuke mentioned.

Pizza was far more perform. Since there was no proven wafu pizza, they experienced to start off from the ground up.

“If we want to make wafu pizza, we have to determine it,” Daisuke reported. 

That despatched Daisuke and his Daikaya spouse Chef Katsuya Fukushima to Japan to create a dough using inspiration from Japanese milk bread – what Daisuke phone calls Japanified Wonderbread.

“We went by way of iteration and iteration and iteration and what we came up with was like, ‘Oh my god, this is genuinely amazing,” Daisuke stated. 

He mentioned the complete approach took about 3 months, by a lot of back-and-forth and demo-and-error. They labored on everything from the parts of the dough to the cooking vessel, to the temperature and timing just before they settled on the dough.

What ends up on your plate at Tonari is a little something that seems to be like your regular deep dish pizza, but preferences entirely distinctive. It’s crispy and crunchy, even though staying chewy and pillowy at the very same time. It’s immensely craveable.

What pushed Daisuke and his associate to create this new pizza? The quick answer is the oven, but it goes further than that.

“There’s many ways to seem at a restaurant. 1 is, you’re hungry, you happen to be feeding persons. But you can do that any where,” Daisuke said. “But when you’re heading to a cafe, you acquired to have an extra reason to go there. At the conclude of the day it is a local community, right? When you are producing a neighborhood you have to have ethos. The ethos to us is fairly important. We’re in this each individual working day. If we just do it simply because ‘Yeah, it is a company,’ you kind of eliminate enthusiasm.”

That enthusiasm was tested when Tonari initial opened its doors in 2020. Months afterwards the COVID-19 pandemic strike and the restaurant had to pivot, briefly providing get-absent solutions, shutting down and ultimately giving a tasting menu at the time doorways opened again.

Now, Tonari is again to whole power, they have nixed the tasting menu and supply merchandise a la carte. They were also just additional to the 2022 version of the D.C. Michelin Guide. From exactly where Daisuke is standing, the accolades are not what this restaurant is about. The aim is not to get a Michelin star.

Connected: Additional than a dozen DC eating places additional to Michelin Information

Related: What is in a star? This is what it takes to get 1 of cooking’s major honors

“Our intention is not to be a Michelin-star restaurant,” he explained. “Our intention is to get the phrase out on what individuals are eating in Japan now.”

That travel to get the word out is anything shared by Nico Cezar, Chef de Cuisine at Tonari. Chef Nico is an alum of Michelin star Italian cafe Masseria so he’s putting his qualifications to great use.

“It’s a blessing for me to be able to parallel my schooling beneath cooking Japanese food items and cooking Italian foodstuff, which will make [wafu cooking] a very little easier to strategy for the reason that I know that I can use this ingredient, or that strategy,”Cezar reported. “It’s simpler for me to solution it that way than sticking to traditional Italian or classic Japanese. What we want to do is make guaranteed that we are obeying this culture of foods in Japan and introducing it to the world… Making them conscious that there is this kind of a factor as Japanese-type Italian food items. We’re not trying to mash up things for the sake of fusing two cultures jointly, you want to make absolutely sure that it is spending homage to that society-unique foods style.”

Though cooking the spaghetti napolitan, a dish which is been on the menu because Tonari opened, the chef points out the worth of the noodles and the contemporary components applied to provide the very simple dish jointly.

“I assume it surprises men and women whenever they flavor the dish, they are like, ‘Oh it’s a ketchup spaghetti, how great could it be?’ It is just how it is set collectively,” Cezar reported. “Buying product or service that is at the height of its period. The very best of what you can responsibly get. Something which is sustainable. That is a little something that I want to drive ahead to the menus that we have here, just earning positive that we’re sticking to the similar idea of representing Italian cooking and Japanese cooking… producing absolutely sure that we’re spending respects in a respectable way without making an attempt to reinvent the wheel. At the conclusion of the day I want Japanese people today to occur in here and be like ‘Oh, this even now will make feeling. This cafe is executing just about every planning or approach justice and representing it very well.’”

The menu, which Cezar would like to adjust every thirty day period, attributes some pizza and pasta mixtures that may be challenging to some diners, but Cezar hopes that these who arrive to Tonari will be adventurous, and willing to check out anything new. For instance, the Mentaiko cream is a sauce created with cod roe. Right now, it can be highlighted on the two a pasta and a pizza on the menu.

As he masses a Mentaiko and corn pizza into the all-vital pizza oven, he explains that the pie will get loaded with cheese, and that the cheese can help the pizza get ridiculously crispy in the pan.

“It’s just about like a corner of a lasagna, but everyone gets a corner piece,” he reported.

Cezar suggests developing new menu objects and recipes can be tough, but it is a thing he enjoys.

“The elegance about understanding Japanese-design and style cooking is you value subtraction as you go,” the chef mentioned. “You only use what you need to have, and which is incredibly tough for a chef to do.”

He reported it goes again to the mission of getting the term out about wafu cuisine.

“How do you teach folks is the difficult element,” Cezar explained. “If you blindfold any person they’ll think, ‘this is a pepperoni pizza.’ Yeah, but do you style the intricacies of the substances that go into the sauce? Which is the problem. I consider we have finished a very good task. My hope is that, shifting ahead, we’ll have a lot a lot more persons curious to come and say, ‘I want to see what you men are accomplishing.'” 

707 6th Street Northwest
Monday & Tuesday – shut
Wednesday & Thursday – 5 pm to 9:30 pm
Friday and Saturday – 5 pm – 10 pm
Sunday – 5 pm – 9 pm

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