Autumn is here, the season of antipasti misti and fruitful mellowness. It's also the time of year, of course, for bountiful supplies of mushrooms and other miscellaneous fungi known collectively as kinoko -- like the excellent assortment we enjoyed the other day at Aburiya, an atmospheric dining bar just off Aoyama-dori.
The bamboo basket we were served held five different species, none of them the anemic cultivated specimens you find on supermarket shelves. There were jonenjo, their long, thick, white, meaty trunks split into quarters lengthwise; a couple of awabitake, a soft, light brown bracket mushroom not so different in shape to the abalone after which they are named; delicate brown-capped shimeji; bright-orange nameko -- not the gelatinous little blobs you find in noodle shops, but a specially large variant; and two kinds of maitake, one the more common variety with feathery gills of a whitish gray, the other with an attractive pink tinge to them.
When they're fresh and in season like this, there's only one thing better than having kinoko that have been cooked over charcoal -- and that is grilling them yourself. Fresh from the grill to your plate, with a squirt of sudachi juice, then into your mouth. That was the reason why we made our way to Aburiya.