88 SEPTEMBER 2019
TO YOUR AVERAGE TRAVELER, Karatsu, a small city on the Japanese
island of Kyushu, might seem worlds away from Los Angeles. And
even though it is 6,000 miles from her acclaimed kaiseki restau-
rant, n/naka, to chef Niki Nakayama, “Seeing the coastal views
and the farmland, I had this feeling of going home, where all of
the things that you’re carrying from your day-to-day life in the
city fade piece by piece.”
For Niki and her wife and sous chef, Carole Iida-Nakayama,
those things were the day-to-day operations of n/naka, for which
the two chefs were featured in the first season of Chef’s Table on
Netflix and for which Niki has been named a semifinalist thrice for
Best Chef: West by the James Beard Foundation. (N/naka, which
was awarded two Michelin stars this summer, is also one of our
World’s Best Restaurants; see p. 26). Last fall, the chefs closed the
restaurant for a week to undertake a quixotic trip—to cook, and
stay, with two women they’d never met.
When Niki and Carole came across “Cultivated Days,” the blog
of writer-photographer Prairie Stuart-Wolff, they felt a shock of
recognition. Prairie and her partner, potter Hanako Nakazato
of studio Monohanako, share a home in the hills and a life that
in some ways mirrors Niki and Carole’s own. Both couples are
engaged in exploring the philosophies that undergird Japanese
cuisine—Niki and Carole through their work at the restaurant and
Prairie and Hanako through writing, photography, cooking, and
ceramics. All four women find different ways of bridging, and
interpreting, the threads of their lives that link them to America
and Japan. Niki and Carole, the children of Japanese immigrants
to California, craft their own highly personal interpretation
of traditional kaiseki cuisine that honors its Japanese philoso-
phies and incorporates as many California ingredients as pos-
sible. Hanako, a 14th-generation ceramicist, draws on Western
and Japanese influences in her pottery, and Prairie, who moved
to Japan with Hanako in 2007, works to capture, in her words
and photographs, the spirit of Japanese cuisine and food culture.
“There was a natural chemistry in a lot of the things we think about
and have dealt with in each of our different crafts—a lot of parallel
paths,” says Niki.
And how did their hosts feel about entertaining world-famous
chefs they’d never met? “I’ve learned that when hosting guests
it’s better to focus less on what kind of reputation precedes them
and more on how I can welcome them with the best I have to
offer,” says Prairie. It’s an approach she takes from the lessons of
the tea ceremony in Japan, she says: “the spirit of a practice that
asks us to set aside the trappings of titles and status so that we may
more fully experience a fellowship of individuals sharing a unique
moment in time and space.”
Over the course of a long weekend, with F&W photographer
Eva Kolenko capturing the visit with her camera, the two couples
cooked together (recipes p. 96), that spark of kinship deepening
into a friendship. “I could sense how hard they worked to get where
they are because they seemed so grateful and respectful to others,”
says Hanako. “Based on that common ground, we were easily able
to enjoy each other’s company and to share what we love.”
This past summer, Prairie and Hanako traveled to Los Angeles
to stay with Niki and Carole, to cook with them at their home,
and to dine at n/naka. But that’s another story. —KAREN SHIMIZU
Fall in Japan offers a bounty of purple radishes,
matsutake mushrooms, yuzu, fresh shiitakes,
persimmons, shiso and shiso blossoms,
fresh figs, and wasabi root. right: Matsutake
Rice (recipe p. 96) with fish bone broth.
below: Carole, Prairie, and Niki in Karatsu.
