Tonari brings wafu Italian cooking to DC straight from Japan

WASHINGTON — Tonari, the most recent cafe from the Daikaya Team, is on a mission. But its mission did not start off where by you could assume.

The folks at the rear of Daikaya have many ramen shops unfold out throughout the District, such as its namesake ramen shop (with Izakaya upstairs) Bantam King fried rooster and ramen, Hatoba and Haikan.

Tonari is suitable next doorway to Daikaya, and close to the corner from Bantam King. But for the group’s upcoming act, they didn’t want to open a different ramen store.

To hear Daikaya co-proprietor Daisuke Utagawa reveal it, when they walked into the area that would turn into Tonari, they understood what they had to do.

The principle for Tonari is wafu Italian cuisine.

“The phrase wafu signifies Japanese-model,” Daisuke stated. “Normally it signifies a little something that is not initially Japanese that is accomplished in Japanese fashion.”

Daisuke claims Tonari’s wafu Italian is not a new design of cuisine, but it is a thing that is new to D.C., and new to the United States.

“Wafu Italian is not one thing we invented,” Daisuke mentioned. “It is something that exists in Japan, but it’s not nicely-identified exterior of Japan.”

Daisuke stresses that wafu Italian is a coming-collectively of cultures, instead than what some could get in touch with “fusion.”

“I individually do not like the term fusion,” he mentioned. “Not due to the fact of what it indicates, but simply because of what the connotations are. There’s a distinction between a natural cultural phenomenon of two matters assembly and getting to be anything, pretty much organically, compared to something that’s put jointly by power.”

That is the mission driving Tonari: To educate men and women about the strategy of wafu Italian cuisine. To exhibit the historical past of two cuisines that arrived alongside one another the natural way in excess of the system of decades in Japan.

Wafu pasta dates back to the ‘50s with a cafe whose title interprets to “hole in the wall.” Daisuke explained the motive that the use of Japanese components in Italian cooking took off in Japan is that the two cultures share a related solution to delicacies.

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

“Here’s a basic remedy for you,” Daisuke states, gesturing to a significant black pizza around at the centre of the kitchen. “That oven.”

It was obvious to the Tonari group that they desired to use that large oven in some respect. Which is where the strategy of wafu pizza and pasta was born. But although wafu pasta experienced roots and historical past driving it, wafu pizza was something fully new, and a little something that Daisuke and his companion dove into headfirst. 

Possessing already set up a ramen provider in Sapporo, Japan via their other ventures, that supplier informed them they also make pasta, and that they tasted diverse from any other pasta they could get since of how they’re produced.

“They have this ramen technological know-how and they utilized it to pasta, and it’s a fully distinctive thing,” Daisuke said.

Pizza was extra operate. Considering the fact that there was no set up wafu pizza, they had to commence from the floor up.

“If we want to make wafu pizza, we have to outline it,” Daisuke said. 

That despatched Daisuke and his Daikaya lover Chef Katsuya Fukushima to Japan to develop a dough utilizing inspiration from Japanese milk bread – what Daisuke calls Japanified Wonderbread.

“We went by means of iteration and iteration and iteration and what we arrived up with was like, ‘Oh my god, this is truly amazing,” Daisuke claimed. 

He explained the full approach took about 3 months, through heaps of again-and-forth and demo-and-error. They worked on almost everything from the elements of the dough to the cooking vessel, to the temperature and timing in advance of they settled on the dough.

What finishes up on your plate at Tonari is a little something that appears like your ordinary deep dish pizza, but preferences totally distinctive. It is crispy and crunchy, when being chewy and pillowy at the exact time. It’s immensely craveable.

What pushed Daisuke and his partner to create this new pizza? The quick respond to is the oven, but it goes deeper than that.

“There’s lots of ways to seem at a cafe. A single is, you are hungry, you might be feeding men and women. But you can do that wherever,” Daisuke mentioned. “But when you are going to a cafe, you bought to have an further motive to go there. At the conclusion of the working day it is a community, right? When you are building a local community you have to have ethos. The ethos to us is pretty important. We’re in this each working day. If we just do it mainly because ‘Yeah, it’s a business,’ you variety of get rid of enthusiasm.”

That enthusiasm was tested when Tonari 1st opened its doorways in 2020. Months later on the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the restaurant had to pivot, briefly presenting just take-away selections, shutting down and inevitably presenting a tasting menu at the time doors opened all over again.

Now, Tonari is again to total energy, they have nixed the tasting menu and offer goods a la carte. They were being also just added to the 2022 edition of the D.C. Michelin Guideline. From exactly where Daisuke is standing, the accolades are not what this restaurant is about. The aim is not to get a Michelin star.

Associated: Much more than a dozen DC eating places added to Michelin Manual

Linked: What is in a star? This is what it usually takes to get 1 of cooking’s most significant honors

“Our goal is not to be a Michelin-star restaurant,” he claimed. “Our target is to get the phrase out on what individuals are ingesting in Japan now.”

That drive to get the word out is some thing shared by Nico Cezar, Chef de Delicacies at Tonari. Chef Nico is an alum of Michelin star Italian cafe Masseria so he’s putting his track record to great use.

“It’s a blessing for me to be equipped to parallel my teaching under cooking Japanese foods and cooking Italian food items, which can make [wafu cooking] a minor simpler to approach for the reason that I know that I can use this ingredient, or that procedure,”Cezar explained. “It is easier for me to method it that way than sticking to classic Italian or common Japanese. What we want to do is make certain that we are obeying this society of foods in Japan and introducing it to the world… Producing them aware that there is these kinds of a thing as Japanese-design and style Italian food items. We’re not attempting to mash up issues for the sake of fusing two cultures alongside one another, you want to make sure that it is paying homage to that society-certain foods type.”

Whilst cooking the spaghetti napolitan, a dish that is been on the menu given that Tonari opened, the chef describes the worth of the noodles and the new ingredients used to convey the very simple dish collectively.

“I believe it surprises folks anytime they taste the dish, they’re like, ‘Oh it’s a ketchup spaghetti, how superior could it be?’ It is just how it’s set collectively,” Cezar said. “Buying solution that is at the top of its time. The greatest of what you can responsibly get. A little something that’s sustainable. That’s some thing that I want to force forward to the menus that we have right here, just generating confident that we’re sticking to the same idea of symbolizing Italian cooking and Japanese cooking… creating guaranteed that we’re shelling out respects in a respectable way without the need of striving to reinvent the wheel. At the close of the day I want Japanese men and women to arrive in here and be like ‘Oh, this even now would make sense. This restaurant is undertaking every single preparation or method justice and symbolizing it properly.’”

The menu, which Cezar would like to alter just about every thirty day period, options some pizza and pasta combos that could be complicated to some diners, but Cezar hopes that individuals who appear to Tonari will be adventurous, and eager to test one thing new. For occasion, the Mentaiko cream is a sauce designed with cod roe. Proper now, it really is showcased 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 clarifies that the pie will get loaded with cheese, and that the cheese can help the pizza get ridiculously crispy in the pan.

“It’s nearly like a corner of a lasagna, but everyone will get a corner piece,” he said.

Cezar claims building new menu items and recipes can be hard, but it is some thing he enjoys.

“The beauty about studying Japanese-style cooking is you worth subtraction as you go,” the chef mentioned. “You only use what you have to have, and which is incredibly hard for a chef to do.”

He explained it goes back again to the mission of finding the phrase out about wafu cuisine.

“How do you teach persons is the difficult section,” Cezar mentioned. “If you blindfold anyone they’ll feel, ‘this is a pepperoni pizza.’ Yeah, but do you flavor the intricacies of the ingredients that go into the sauce? That’s the problem. I imagine we have accomplished a very good position. My hope is that, moving forward, we’ll have a great deal far more individuals curious to come and say, ‘I want to see what you guys are performing.'” 

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

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