Why Takashi Miyazaki will risk Michelin star by closing Ichigo Ichie

There are four other starred restaurants in the county — Bastion in Kinsale, Restaurant Chestnut in Ballydehob, Terre Restaurant in Castlemartyr, and two-starred Dede at the Customs House in Baltimore — but it seems, the glow of the city’s culinary starlight will soon grow substantially dimmer.

The first obvious thought is that Ichigo Ichie is yet another casualty of the relentless and remorseless buffeting to which hospitality has been subjected over the last number of years, first tremors beginning with Brexit, tectonic plates sundering almost entirely with the arrival of the pandemic, and then the pronounced and ongoing aftershock of the war in Ukraine, with the epicentre of their cumulative impact on the restaurant industry apparent where it hurts most — the “Bottom Line”.

There has been a steady drip-feed of casualties shutting up for good, from fast food to fine dining, and there will surely be more to come.

The very excellent Michelin-starred Loam, in Galway, finally, and very sadly, called it a day last year, and most of the rural-based Michelin Star restaurants close down for sizeable chunks of the year, unable to maintain footfall over an entire 12 months.

Curiously, however, Takashi Miyazaki and his partner, Stephanie Higgins, seem positively invigorated by the thought of the approaching change.

“After the pandemic,” Takashi says, “Ichigo Ichie has really changed. It has got quieter, and in a high-end restaurant, it is really hard to keep that up.

“People use our restaurant for very special occasions, but I don’t feel like being that type of place anymore, and I don’t feel like I can charge €140 or €150 anymore [the cost of the set kaiseki menu for one person in the restaurant, not including drinks].”

“This change has been simmering for a while,” Stephanie adds, “things are getting slower, it’s harder to get the [essential Japanese ingredients], new blockades always springing up, and this is an option that we have that will just pump life back into everybody.”

But it is more than just financial imperatives dictating this change.

A Michelin Star will understandably be a cherished aspiration for any ambitious chef; it is a near-universally acknowledged mark of ability and achievement, both within the industry and amongst the general public.

Achieving one requires enormous sacrifice, maintaining it even more so, for the manic pursuit of that holy grail can then be further augmented, once awarded, by the fear of losing it.

"GREAT CITY, GREAT PEOPLE, GREAT FOOD"

Many stressed chef-restaurateurs, petrified of veering away from Michelin’s demands of consistency, can lose touch with one of the primary pleasures of working in hospitality — the enormous pleasure and fun to be had from cooking and serving food to an appreciative audience, building up personal relationships.

Michelin scratches an itch for many a chef but, frankly, you don’t do it for the giggles.

Furthermore, the — entirely justifiable — price point at which Ichigo Ichie has to operate at to cover costs, makes it a very exclusive restaurant, a rare treat which has the effect of seeing it sited in Cork, but not really a part of the local community in the way that their first restaurant, the enormously popular Miyazaki takeaway, serving up Japanese street food, has been embraced by the Leeside citizenry — as many Ichigo Ichie customers travel from elsewhere in Ireland and around the world as fetch up from the ‘burbs of Cork city.

“I feel like Ichigo Ichie exists in Cork city, but we don’t get local people every day because it’s so expensive,” Takashi says, “and we have had to charge even more after costs went up and Vat went up.

“Even using so many [imported] Japanese ingredients, that’s so expensive, and it has got worse after Brexit and the Russian war.”

Added to that is the question of sustainability.

“We have always used local Irish produce,” Takashi adds, “but the Japanese ingredients that we have to add, to make traditional kaiseki-style dishes, have to be imported.

“They are not only expensive, but it is adding to the food mileage, even the saké. So if we can get almost everything locally, and work with local producers, where there are almost no food miles, that is more sustainable.”

“We always wanted to open up a high-end restaurant,” Stephanie says, “but we started with the takeaway because we couldn’t afford anything else. But even when we opened up the takeaway, we still wanted to open up a high-end restaurant, not necessarily a Michelin Star [one].

“We were very grateful to get it, but it wasn’t the aim. But people were always in our ears, asking when we were going to open a casual, seated version of Miyazaki.

“We’ve had the Michelin Star restaurant for five years now and now it’s about going back to fun.”

When first scouting for a location for what became Miyazaki, the duo toured pretty much the entire country, at one stage seriously considering Dingle, but when they arrived in Cork city, they knew they had found their spot.

“I said, ‘We have to come to Cork! It’s buzzing!’ It’s a great city, great people, great food,” Stephanie says.

They are both now firmly embedded in the city, with Takashi even developing an endearing Japanese-Cork accent. He has built up great relationships with other top hospitality practitioners, and many of them have now become friends. 

He too feels it's time to enjoy his chef life a bit more and embrace “casual”.

“Miyazaki, our original restaurant, is very popular and local people love that, and I would enjoy it more and be happier with more local people in Ichigo Ichie — and ‘casual’ means fun. We can do a lot more dishes and it’s a better life balance as well.”

Though “bistro” might seem an odd fit for the name, bistros are very much a part of Japanese restaurant culture, the French name adopted to signify a certain type of casual Japanese restaurant serving small plates.

"MORE OF A SHARING STYLE"

Ichigo Ichie Bistro & Natural Wine will open from 5pm, walk-ins welcome, and offering a far more budget-conscious menu, with a substantial vegan offering, that even students will be able to afford. “It will be more of a kind of sharing style,” Takashi says, “a kind of Japanese tapas style or bistro style, people share each plate.

“There will be a lot of the very popular Miyazaki menu, dishes like katsudon, but maybe smaller portions. People have always asked when will we do Miyazaki sit-down, and this will be a big part of it.”

And when Takashi says “local produce”, he really means it.

“We are going to use so much more dairy produce. Irish dairy produce is so beautiful, but kaiseki-style cooking doesn’t really use it, the flavours are too strong — some people think Japanese food is quite bland, but it's just that the flavours are delicate, very subtle — so I can work with dairy more and create my own dishes.

“I will still use Irish beef, chicken, pork, duck, and especially lamb [Irish lamb has always been one of his most favourite foods], not the spring lamb, I find that a bit bland, but more mature with more flavour. But I can also start using more fresh, local salads.

“The Cork Rooftop Farm has lovely eggs and I can make Japanese omelette [which is rolled up and eaten with hands] and put something local in it. Unagi maki, I can give them a local twist, and it’s so much more fun to be working more with beautiful local
vegetables.

“And we’re getting rid of truffles, saying goodbye to truffles, caviar, foie gras, goodbye! And there will be no sushi—well, maybe special occasions, if I get a bluefin tuna from K. O’Connell’s [fishmongers in the English Market], I might do a carpaccio or aged turbot, but mostly no more sushi.”

At one stage, the word “soba” was very seriously being considered as part of the new name, because Takashi intends to make soba noodles a central part of the offering, believing it will be one of the very few restaurants in Europe to offer in-house daily handmade noodles.

“I will do Nihachi soba [80% buckwheat flour, 20% wheat flour] which takes 15 steps to make, from milling the buckwheat. It is the best noodle, a totally different process than ramen or udon—they are so simple—and I am working with a farmer in West Cork to grow Irish buckwheat, and really want to use that in the future. I will definitely have three different cold soba noodle dishes and a hot soba dish, maybe tempura and chicken kariage, or duck nanban.”

A feature of Ichigo Ichie has always been its very excellent natural wine list, a heartfelt passion of Takashi’s, and each and every one of the Irish importers that Takashi works with marvel regularly at his preternatural ability to respond to the complex flavour profiles of a particular wine, with instant tweaks of his dishes to engineer perfect pairings. 

Accordingly, saké will disappear almost entirely, bar two or three options and the natural wine list will expand substantially.

Cork city may well be losing a Michelin Star, but I strongly suspect the move will instead copperfasten the status of a real keeper on Leeside, a very special “new” restaurant and a space for Takashi to give free rein to, and explore the full extent of, his creative impulses.

“It’s going to be fun,” Stephanie, says “and uplifting and energising!”

“I can’t wait to see more local people in here,” Takashi says, “it will be so much more fun and I need that!”

• Ichigo Ichie Bistro & Natural Wine will open in January 2024
• This article was edited to include the Michelin-starred Terre restaurant in Castlemartyr Resort, as the county's fifth Michelin-starred restaurant. We are happy to correct the record, and apologise for the oversight.