A Supermarket Aisle, Then Dashi From Scratch

Four hours, seven guests, and it starts in a supermarket rather than a kitchen. That is the useful part: your guide walks you through the aisles explaining how to pick meat, fish and vegetables, and what all the seasonings actually are, which is the single hardest thing about cooking Japanese food anywhere else.

Then a professional studio near Iriya, within reach of Asakusa and Kappabashi, the street where every restaurant in Tokyo buys its knives and crockery.

The class covers knife handling first, then dashi, which is where Japanese cooking begins: kombu steeped rather than boiled, bonito flakes added off the heat and strained within a minute. Almost every savoury dish in the country sits on top of it. You also make properly seasoned sushi rice, which most people get wrong before they get anywhere near the fish.

The dishes are home cooking rather than restaurant food: miso soup, eggplant dengaku with sweet miso glazed under heat, dashimaki tamago, the rolled omelette made with dashi in the egg, and sushi.

Then you eat what you made, with tea, and take the recipes home.

All ingredients included, photos sent afterwards. Vegan and vegetarian versions are arranged properly, with different ingredients and method, not just omissions. Tell them at least a day ahead about diets or allergies; same-day requests cannot be handled, and if you cannot eat eggs the menu drops from four dishes to three.

Meet at the convenience store next to the takoyaki shop at Iriya Exit 2, not the other one. The tour starts on time: more than five minutes late without contact counts as a cancellation with no refund. Free date changes up to 24 hours before.