It takes a remarkable degree of self-confidence for any chef to open their first restaurant at the young age of 26. To do that in the fall of 2020, just as the pandemic was gathering strength in Japan, would seem to defy all logic.
Chef Natsuki Suzuki clearly has no need or inclination to second guess himself. After just 3½ years — and still months away from his 30th birthday — he now runs one of the most highly regarded and hardest to book restaurants in the Shinshu region of central Honshu.
Named after a nickname Suzuki acquired while training in Europe, Naz lies just down the road from the place where he grew up and took his first steps as a chef.
Tucked away on the rural fringe of Karuizawa, a popular resort town in mountainous Nagano Prefecture, Naz neither looks nor feels much like a typical restaurant. But that is only to be expected of a chef who is following his own distinctive path, melding Italian and Nordic influences with the best local ingredients he can find.
From Nagano to the world
Landlocked Nagano Prefecture has its own rustic food traditions but little history as a center for modern gastronomy. Even so, Suzuki knew from an early age that he too wanted to pursue a career as a chef, inspired by his grandfather, who ran a restaurant in the area.
At 16, he jumped from the schoolroom into the kitchen, joining local pizza specialty restaurant Zingara, reputed for its wood-fired oven and better-than-average Italian cooking. After four years there, he was ready to head to the source, Naples, to train at one of the city’s most revered old-school pizzerias, Dal Presidente.
Returning to Japan 12 months later, Suzuki took a job at a casual Italian restaurant in Tokyo’s Meguro Ward. Even then, his goal was to open a place of his own, but he also knew he had plenty more to learn. By 2019, he had stored up enough experience and money to make his next move.
Intrigued by what he had heard about Nordic cuisine, Suzuki headed to Denmark. It was totally new for him — both the culture and the cuisine. He did find some important points in common with Japan, though, specifically the use of wild plants as ingredients and fermentation as a key technique.
While in Copenhagen, he completed a three-month stage at Noma, at that time with two Michelin stars (it now holds three) but already crowned four times at the apex of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. He then did a similar internship of the same length at Kadeau (also two stars), widening his understanding of ways to imbue foods with extra umami through fermentation.
Suzuki had planned to move on elsewhere in Scandinavia, but by then Denmark was in a COVID-induced lockdown. In March 2020, he returned to Japan and, once out of quarantine, back to Nagano — except this time he was seeing it with new eyes.
Naz is born
Visiting farmers and producers around the prefecture, Suzuki was inspired by what he found: great produce, meat from chemical-free pastures, superb river-caught fish and clean, pure air and water. Most important of all, it was his home — the place he understood best.
By September 2020, Suzuki had found the perfect location. He took over a holiday rental villa, part of a small development that was completed in the early days of the pandemic. The kitchen was compact and so too the dining room, with only space for a few tables. That was fine by him.
With wood interiors and high ceilings, it felt to him like he was serving dinner in his own home. He handled the cooking, while his mother took care of service. In those earliest months, Naz served meals that were short, relatively simple and priced accordingly from a modest ¥3,500 for a three-course lunch.
These days, Suzuki charges 10 times that price (at both lunch and dinner), with more added to cover the drinks pairings. That reflects the significant leap in the sophistication of his cuisine, as well as the cost of the extra staff he now employs to produce his 10-course tasting menus. It also results from his decision to continue serving only a limited number of guests at each meal.
At lunch, Suzuki offers just two tables with five seats maximum; and for dinner, there is only one table, serving between four and six people. The effect is luxurious, almost magical — as if you are sitting down at a bespoke dinner club for a meal catered exclusively for you and your party. And what a meal it is, bringing all Suzuki’s influences to bear: Italian, Nordic and, increasingly, homegrown Japanese.
Dining from river, ranch and forest
The winter menu opens with a small cube of freshly made yomogi mochi, sticky rice pounded with wild mugwort, which is deep-fried and topped with a small mound of Ossetra caviar. With a glass of fine blanc de blancs Champagne on the side, you know from the very start you are in good hands.
Fresh-made pasta is a constant at Naz. In warmer seasons, this may be light ribbons or perhaps tightly coiled capellini. But in the depths of winter, Suzuki turns instead to a more rustic tradition. Culurgiones are jumbo ravioli that in Sardinia would contain potato and cheese. At Naz, they’re packed with minced kurobuta pork and Chinese cabbage, then submerged in a hearty, warming soup thick with aromatic sake lees.
Just because Nagano has no coastline, that doesn’t mean ocean fish are excluded from the menu. At this time of year, do not be surprised if Suzuki serves fugu (blowfish), especially its shirako (milt), which he likes to age, then grill over charcoal, perhaps adding a homemade relish of preserved strawberry, the salty-sweet-tart flavors adding a subtle contrast to the smokiness of the seafood.
The year-round signature dish at Naz is a freshwater fish: Shinshu "salmon" (actually a cross breed of rainbow trout and brown trout) raised in pure mountain river water. Suzuki brings a whole side of a 3-year-old fish to the table as a show-and-tell: It has been aged for more than 10 days before being smoked and slow-cooked at low temperature.
A small mound of this "salmon" is encased under slices of lightly fermented kabu turnip with a topping of preserved elderflower buds. At the table, Suzuki pours over a sauce made from fermented tomato and pomegranate juice, adding fig leaf oil to create a beautifully mottled surface of pink and green.
Another local fish he makes good use of is koi (carp). Thanks to the outstanding purity of the water, the fish has none of its usual muddiness. Instead, the flavor is light enough to serve as sashimi or as the topping for a simple temari (hand-formed) sushi.
Fillets of the fish are grilled and served over delicate sōmen wheat noodles. Because carp contain numerous tiny bones, their flesh has to be prepared using the same technique as for hamo (pike conger eel), slicing numerous fine incisions just half a millimeter apart.
Suzuki devotes equal attention to his trademark winter vegetable dish, made with celeriac prepared two ways: dried, sliced and roasted until the outside is crisp but soft inside and still hot from the oven; and pureed into a savory ice cream, topped with fermented pineapple and accented with Amazon cacao. It’s a genius combination, which you eat with your hands, filling the slices with the ice cream as if they were tacos.
These are just a few of the standouts at Naz. There are plenty more local specialties, from Shinshu Minemura wagyu beef to vegetables both foraged and cultivated. Underscored by the light accents of fermentation, never too bold or insistent, Suzuki’s cuisine has a palate unlike any of his neighbors’.
But there is one dish you might expect that is never on his menu. The colorful Neapolitan-style pizza oven outside the front door is the first thing you see as you arrive. But it rarely gets fired up.
"That’s just for fun," Suzuki says with a smile.
It’s for days off, for the rare moments he is free to hang out with friends. And as a reminder of where his culinary journey began — and how far he has come in such a short time.
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