Osusume

Osusume means “small appetizers” – the “specials” which are written on the boards of traditional Japanese eating places. Twenty to twenty five daily selections will be created at Hamon, and the menu will change every night depending on the specially ordered ingredients, or tokubetsu zairyo. Spanning the four seasons, we may serve over five hundred different dishes, exploring the entire range of washoku cuisine. The ideal at Hamon is a meal of small pleasures, all concentrated, harmonious experiences that have fed the soul of Japan for 1000 years. Banzai!

Tokubetsu Zairyo

Key to washoku are the specially ordered ingredients, or tokubetsu zairyo, which literally means “high level other ingredients cooking” that Suzuki Sensei translates into the daily menu, or osusume. Hamon has connections to specialty seafood and rare Japanese ingredients so that, throughout the year, you may enjoy hundreds of washoku osusume tokubetsuzairyo – “traditional small dishes from specialty ingredients” – that would be difficult to find in one place, even in Japan. Kanpai!

Minarai

The word mirarai literally means “looking apprentice” – a traditional form of apprenticeship in Japan that begins with only looking. As an apprentice, you may not touch anything at all until the swordsmith gives you a shovel for ashes – or until an itamae, a chef, gives you a pot to wash. Everyone who works at Hamon is a minarai, on a spiritual path that may begin with washing the inside and outside of the windows that let light in and light out. Minarai wa ganbatte kudasai!