Sun, 18/11/2009 – Jude Fanton
Dorobushi is a restaurant in Ginza, a smart shopping area of Tokyo. But it is different to all the others. The owner has made a commitment to using not only ingredients grown organically but those from natural farming method that does not use any inputs. They also eschew the use of fridges as they like their produce fresh and consider a fridge a food cemetery.
Last night we were guests of the restaurant for a meal of vegetables and rice eaten with students of The Seed Meister.
Organic production is often heavily reliant on manures as fertiliser to boost production that can result in high levels of nitrates in the produce. The natural farming method rejects their use. Consumers of this produce claim it helps reduce allergies, can cure and alleviate disease and tastes better. Several of the attendees at the party last night were cancer sufferers, some had claims of cures for chronic diseases like atopic syndrome through eating produce from this farming method.
Whatever the effects of eating this food, it sure tasted good. While the ingredients were standard Japanese vegetables – rice, burdock roots, lettuce, grated carrot, pickled daikon, carrot and cucumber, mushrooms – the taste was much more intense than any others we have eaten in our two weeks in Japan.
It made us a bit homesick for the produce we eat from our low-input gardens back in Australia.