Riding high on the wave of travel to Japan, Air Canada has enlisted a Michelin-starred chef for the first time to develop Japanese kaiseki (multicourse Japanese haute cuisine) to be served in its Signature Class (formerly known as International Business Class).
Created by chef Masaki Hashimoto, who runs the one-Michelin-starred restaurant Kaiseki Yu-zen Hashimoto in Toronto, the new in-flight menu was officially launched on March 3. It will be available on routes between Canada and Japan.
At a March 6 tasting event in Tokyo for the new in-flight menu, Mark Nasr, Air Canada’s executive vice president of marketing and digital, says the new offering “allows us to bring a real Japanese experience (to customers) from the moment their trip starts.”
“They can get in the mood and start thinking and ‘feeling’ Japan even before arriving,” he says.
According to Masaaki Ito, Air Canada’s Japan branch general manager, it took more than two years from the initial discussion with Hashimoto to develop the menu. Hashimoto, who was born in Ehime Prefecture and has lived in Toronto for close to four decades, was one of the first to introduce kaiseki in Canada.
The chef says the biggest challenge he faced in developing the new menu was “learning how to deal with freezing and reheating, since (the environment in a) flight is very different from a restaurant’s.”
He adds that it also wasn’t easy to find Japanese ingredients abroad, so the menu on flights departing from Japan will differ slightly from that on flights from Canada. However, he is confident that the slight adjustments won’t impact flavor, since the cooking techniques are authentically Japanese.
“My task is to make you feel the taste (belongs to) a restaurant in Japan,” he says.
Hashimoto’s menu aligns with the flow of traditional kaiseki: delicate appetizers comprising mostly seasonal vegetables segue into simmered and grilled items before a rice dish serves as a hearty closure to the main courses.
Some of Hashimoto’s dishes include smoked duck with lemon slices and vinegared myōga (Japanese ginger), boiled pike conger skin and seaweed with ginger and sweet vinegar, and simmered sea bream with shredded burdock root, tofu and field peas.
Kei Hashimoto, the chef’s son and a sake sommelier, has also selected a Ninki-ichi Gold junmai daiginjo sake from Fukushima Prefecture to be paired with the menu.
“This sake is a sort of palate cleanser that enables you to taste each dish better,” he says.
Currently, the menu has three variations that will change on a monthly basis. The chef and Air Canada stress that this is an ongoing collaboration with various plans in the pipeline, such as introducing stronger seasonality in the dishes, and new plates and utensils from tableware maker Noritake — handpicked by Hashimoto — to be used next month.
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