Tonari brings wafu Italian cooking to DC straight from Japan

WASHINGTON — Tonari, the newest cafe from the Daikaya Group, is on a mission. But its mission didn’t begin wherever you might assume.

The individuals behind Daikaya very own quite a few ramen retailers spread out across the District, such as its namesake ramen store (with Izakaya upstairs) Bantam King fried hen and ramen, Hatoba and Haikan.

Tonari is right up coming doorway to Daikaya, and all-around the corner from Bantam King. But for the group’s following act, they didn’t want to open up one more ramen store.

To hear Daikaya co-operator Daisuke Utagawa clarify it, when they walked into the area that would turn out to be Tonari, they knew what they experienced to do.

The concept for Tonari is wafu Italian delicacies.

“The word wafu means Japanese-design,” Daisuke defined. “Normally it usually means a little something that is not originally Japanese that is completed in Japanese style.”

Daisuke claims Tonari’s wafu Italian is not a new model of cuisine, but it is a thing that is new to D.C., and new to the United States.

“Wafu Italian is not one thing we invented,” Daisuke claimed. “It’s one thing that exists in Japan, but it’s not perfectly-regarded outside of Japan.”

Daisuke stresses that wafu Italian is a coming-jointly of cultures, fairly than what some could possibly phone “fusion.”

“I personally do not like the term fusion,” he said. “Not since of what it implies, but due to the fact of what the connotations are. There’s a variance involving a all-natural cultural phenomenon of two things conference and turning into one thing, practically organically, compared to some thing that is place collectively by pressure.”

That is the mission behind Tonari: To teach individuals about the idea of wafu Italian delicacies. To present the record of two cuisines that came alongside one another by natural means in excess of the training course of many years in Japan.

Wafu pasta dates again to the ‘50s with a restaurant whose name translates to “hole in the wall.” Daisuke said the explanation that the use of Japanese substances in Italian cooking took off in Japan is that the two cultures share a very similar approach to cuisine.

So why deliver that design and style of cooking to D.C. diners?

“Here’s a simple reply for you,” Daisuke states, gesturing to a substantial black pizza over at the center of the kitchen area. “That oven.”

It was distinct to the Tonari workforce that they preferred to use that huge oven in some respect. That’s the place the idea of wafu pizza and pasta was born. But although wafu pasta had roots and record behind it, wafu pizza was some thing solely new, and anything that Daisuke and his companion dove into headfirst. 

Owning presently proven a ramen supplier in Sapporo, Japan through their other ventures, that supplier advised them they also make pasta, and that they tasted distinct from any other pasta they could get simply because of how they’re manufactured.

“They have this ramen engineering and they utilized it to pasta, and it’s a absolutely various thing,” Daisuke claimed.

Pizza was far more get the job done. Considering the fact that there was no proven wafu pizza, they had to start from the ground up.

“If we want to make wafu pizza, we have to define it,” Daisuke said. 

That sent Daisuke and his Daikaya lover Chef Katsuya Fukushima to Japan to establish a dough working with inspiration from Japanese milk bread – what Daisuke phone calls Japanified Wonderbread.

“We went as a result of iteration and iteration and iteration and what we came up with was like, ‘Oh my god, this is genuinely great,” Daisuke explained. 

He stated the whole procedure took about a few months, via loads of again-and-forth and demo-and-mistake. They worked on every little thing from the components of the dough to the cooking vessel, to the temperature and timing just before they settled on the dough.

What finishes up on your plate at Tonari is something that appears to be like your common deep dish pizza, but preferences entirely various. It is crispy and crunchy, whilst getting chewy and pillowy at the very same time. It is immensely craveable.

What pushed Daisuke and his associate to build this new pizza? The limited reply is the oven, but it goes deeper than that.

“There’s many means to glimpse at a restaurant. Just one is, you are hungry, you are feeding people. But you can do that any where,” Daisuke explained. “But when you’re heading to a restaurant, you received to have an additional motive to go there. At the end of the working day it’s a group, proper? When you are creating a group you have to have ethos. The ethos to us is rather critical. We’re in this just about every day. If we just do it due to the fact ‘Yeah, it is a business enterprise,’ you variety of eliminate enthusiasm.”

That enthusiasm was examined when Tonari initial opened its doors in 2020. Months afterwards the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the restaurant had to pivot, briefly offering consider-absent options, shutting down and ultimately featuring a tasting menu once doorways opened yet again.

Now, Tonari is again to whole energy, they have nixed the tasting menu and offer items a la carte. They were also just additional to the 2022 version of the D.C. Michelin Guide. From the place Daisuke is standing, the accolades are not what this cafe is about. The aim is not to get a Michelin star.

Associated: Far more than a dozen DC eating places included to Michelin Guidebook

Relevant: What’s in a star? Here’s what it usually takes to get a single of cooking’s biggest honors

“Our target is not to be a Michelin-star restaurant,” he mentioned. “Our intention is to get the word out on what persons are taking in in Japan now.”

That drive to get the term out is some thing shared by Nico Cezar, Chef de Cuisine at Tonari. Chef Nico is an alum of Michelin star Italian cafe Masseria so he’s placing his qualifications to great use.

“It’s a blessing for me to be ready to parallel my training below cooking Japanese meals and cooking Italian foodstuff, which helps make [wafu cooking] a tiny much easier to approach since I know that I can use this ingredient, or that procedure,”Cezar said. “It is less difficult for me to tactic it that way than sticking to traditional Italian or classic Japanese. What we want to do is make sure that we are obeying this culture of meals in Japan and introducing it to the world… Creating them knowledgeable that there is this sort of a detail as Japanese-design and style Italian food. We’re not making an attempt to mash up points for the sake of fusing two cultures collectively, you want to make absolutely sure that it is having to pay homage to that lifestyle-unique meals design and style.”

Whilst cooking the spaghetti napolitan, a dish that is been on the menu given that Tonari opened, the chef points out the significance of the noodles and the fresh new substances made use of to bring the easy dish collectively.

“I assume it surprises men and women whenever they flavor the dish, they’re like, ‘Oh it’s a ketchup spaghetti, how great could it be?’ It is just how it’s put collectively,” Cezar claimed. “Ordering item which is at the height of its period. The best of what you can responsibly get. Something that’s sustainable. Which is some thing that I want to push forward to the menus that we have in this article, just generating certain that we’re sticking to the exact plan of representing Italian cooking and Japanese cooking… building positive that we’re spending respects in a respectable way with no hoping to reinvent the wheel. At the close of the day I want Japanese people to occur in in this article and be like ‘Oh, this however will make perception. This restaurant is executing just about every preparing or method justice and symbolizing it perfectly.’”

The menu, which Cezar would like to change every thirty day period, functions some pizza and pasta combinations that may possibly be overwhelming to some diners, but Cezar hopes that individuals who arrive to Tonari will be adventurous, and willing to consider one thing new. For instance, the Mentaiko product is a sauce built with cod roe. Proper now, it truly is highlighted on both of those a pasta and a pizza on the menu.

As he hundreds a Mentaiko and corn pizza into the all-crucial pizza oven, he describes that the pie receives loaded with cheese, and that the cheese assists the pizza get ridiculously crispy in the pan.

“It’s nearly like a corner of a lasagna, but all people will get a corner piece,” he explained.

Cezar suggests establishing new menu objects and recipes can be difficult, but it’s one thing he enjoys.

“The elegance about learning Japanese-style cooking is you benefit subtraction as you go,” the chef said. “You only use what you have to have, and that’s quite difficult for a chef to do.”

He said it goes back to the mission of having the term out about wafu cuisine.

“How do you teach people is the tough element,” Cezar claimed. “If you blindfold anyone they’ll believe, ‘this is a pepperoni pizza.’ Yeah, but do you flavor the intricacies of the ingredients that go into the sauce? Which is the obstacle. I assume we have finished a excellent occupation. My hope is that, relocating forward, we’ll have a good deal extra people curious to arrive and say, ‘I want to see what you fellas are performing.'” 

707 6th Road Northwest
Monday & Tuesday – shut
Wednesday & Thursday – 5 pm to 9:30 pm
Friday and Saturday – 5 pm – 10 pm
Sunday – 5 pm – 9 pm

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