There’s no easy way to classify n/naka, the shining Palms restaurant star by chef Niki Nakayama and partner Carole Iida. It’s a fine dining haven in a city overrun with casual offers, sure, but that doesn’t convey the appeal of a Friday night dinner inside, with tables close enough together that the mood feels like one big party.
It’s a kaiseki restaurant, definitely, but unlike — both in ingredients and preparation — a lot of what one might find in Japan. Yes, it’s that restaurant from season one of Chef’s Table, but that’s just about the last thing Nakayama and Iida want to spend their time talking about.
Instead, they and the entire staff at n/naka find themselves, night after night, staring down at a single table in the dining room. From that hovering height, it’s easy to see the story of n/naka unfold like the menus themselves.
Nakayama has long been enamored with coursed out fine dining, with its rhythmic practices and calm demeanor. Spotless plates hit tablemates simultaneously; left-handed eaters notice how subtly the staff replaces silverware on the correct side. It’s a focused kind of dance, one Nakayama believes is the truest representation of not only her food, but her personal progression.
“I didn’t grow up eating fine dining,” says Nakayama from the dining room of her recently-remodeled restaurant. “After I started learning more about cooking, and what cooking for me really means, I realized that fine dining can be pretty fun. I’ve always thought it would be amazing to bring that to our guests through Japanese food.”
Kaiseki dining has an inherent storytelling element built in. It’s the progression, the trip from the first plate to the last, and as much about the food itself as what Nakayama wants to say. Fine dining is a way for the otherwise reserved chef to explore and push boundaries, to rethink the box instead of purposefully and aggressively working outside it.
That’s why n/naka has been quietly transforming its entire menu, attempting to source as much as possible from right here in California. It’s a Sisyphean task, really, because Iida and Nakayama know that as hard as they try to look, some ingredients, some flavors, must come from Japan in order for a particular dish to work the way they expect it to. But they grow some of the herbs they’re after themselves in a small garden anyway, and source sustainable California coastal seafood from the Michael Cimarusti-backed Dock to Dish program. The result is a beautiful agedashi presentation using rock cod and tomatillos — very Japanese, but even more California.
“I ate a lot of mostly traditional Japanese food with my family,” says Iida, who grew up in Japanese kitchens in Southern California. “But my taste preferences still might not be the same as someone who’s from Japan.” Her diners are accustomed to those subtle flourishes that show the wide path between Japanese kaiseki and what n/naka has become. “Our customers expect the non-traditional now to a degree, and with my more traditional background, it’s really fun to get to marry the two.”
In one of the more illuminating examples, n/naka has recently decided to turn away completely from bluefin tuna. There’s the urgent issue of overfishing and the politics for some of even seeing the name on the menu, farmed or not, but for both chefs the push to shy away for good came from a desire to innovate personally. “Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where the actual product is something you could believe in,” says Nakayama, “and when people had it they believed in it too?”
Bluefin tuna is a rich delicacy still commonly found in Japan, but bright, sustainable big eye tuna is just as much of an early course standout when served thoughtfully with dabs of nori paste and avocado cream and sorrel beet sauce. Offered on a delicate chiseled crystal plate in n/naka’s redone dining room, the whole thing becomes about so much more than the provenance of the fish.
The same is true of the restaurant space itself. N/naka just underwent perhaps its first massive interior overhaul since opening in 2011, swapping in new wooden tables and an army of bespoke chairs made by hand by an artist named Mario Correa. Nakayama and Iida approached Correa to find out if woodworking at that scale would even be possible for him, and the answer is a dining room filled with heavy, modern showpieces, perfect for the three hour-plus meals that n/naka turns out every evening. Plus, Iida says, why put all this effort into the food, the service, the wine list, and not also work with artisans and passionate producers when it comes to the chairs and napkins and silverware?
“I think one thing we recognized with Chef’s Table is that there’s a feeling from what Niki went through and struggled with, and it’s resonated,” says Iida. “People want to root for her, and they have this emotional connection before they even come here. So we looked around and realized that we needed everything to be personal and representative of us.”
And so it all comes back to the table, the staff looking down from above to make sure the placemats make sense with the chairs, and that the table makes sense with the food. Maybe not visually, or even thematically, but personally. At its heart, after Chef’s Table and the months-out reservations that still sell out in minutes and the decision to craft a Japanese menu that is, whenever possible, literally rooted in the dirt and sea of California, n/naka is still (and always will be) a personal project for partners Iida and Nakayama, and for the diners who come to see them.
N/naka famously never repeats a dish for returning customers and keeps extensive notes on anyone who has dined with them, which makes every return customer a new challenge and a new opportunity to go deeper into what makes the chefs, their staff, and the unseen army of producers and purveyors tick. Every dish is its own new beginning, a reason to keep looking down, while also looking ahead.
n/naka
3455 S. Overland Ave.
Los Angeles, CA