P72 sows the seeds for a dynamic plant-based cuisine

Japan Times

a day ago

The first thing I notice on walking into P72, aside from the massive art installation twisting rhizome-like on the ceiling, is how busy it is. It's nearly 2 p.m. on a midweek afternoon, but the dining room is still packed. Despite the restaurant's proximity to tourist magnet Osaka Castle, the crowd looks local, mostly businesspeople and ladies who lunch. The establishment only opened in May, but its predominantly plant-based cuisine has already found a following.
P72 is the signature restaurant at Patina Osaka, the first Japanese outpost of Thailand's luxury Capella Hotel Group. Its concept, which is inspired by its namesake that references the 72 microseasons in Japan's traditional calendar, is an ever-changing menu of French-inflected, hyper-seasonal fare that largely eschews animal products and aims for sustainability.
The chef behind the concept is Patina Osaka's culinary director Antony Scholtmeyer, 57, who drew on his rural upbringing outside of Melbourne, Australia.
'My mom was vegetarian, and I grew up in the countryside, so she always had beautiful vegetables growing (in her garden),' he says. 'I used to be really surprised at why things tasted better at home than they did when I bought them from the market, and it was because mom was just taking them straight out of the soil.'
Harvesting from home
Going locavore, P72 sources things as close to home as possible, partnering with organic farms outside the city and on Awaji Island in Hyogo Prefecture. And rather than ordering specific things, they let those suppliers decide what's worth delivering.
'Every week, we just order from them a 20-kilogram box, and then whatever comes in that box is what they're growing and what is beautiful at that particular time,' says Scholtmeyer, adding that the lack of predictability keeps things exciting. 'My team thinks it's like Christmas every week.'
The on-site garden allows P72's kitchen team to pick the freshest ingredients to complement those from its suppliers. |
PATINA OSAKA
The rest of the restaurant's ingredients come from their own premises: an on-site garden that does double duty as outdoor seating and a hydroponic shelf in the center of the dining room.
'It's a freestyle way of cooking food because whatever's coming from here and our suppliers is what we use on the menu,' Scholtmeyer says. 'We don't want it to be scripted. We want it to be very natural.'
The hydroponics setup still has a fairly low yield as they figure out best practices, but Scholtmeyer hopes it can eventually produce a lot of fast-growing herbs and salad greens once they settle on seed-sown hydroballs or seedlings as the best starter. In the meantime, it adds a dash of fresh green to the homey wood interior.
It's the on-site garden that is clearly Scholtmeyer's passion project, though. His demeanor visibly perks up as he shows me through the space, a series of lush terraces and flowing waterfalls shielded from the surrounding traffic by a wall of trees.
The restaurant employs wood tones and touches of green to evoke a serene dining atmosphere. |
PATINA OSAKA
The garden is fully organic, grown without pesticides or fertilizers, so it's been a learning process finding what will work in the space. Scholtmeyer points to a planter now overflowing with seven different kinds of mint. 'This was all edible flowers and where a caterpillar stampede originated from, so we had to get them out,' he says.
He moves happily from planter to planter, plucking flowers to eat and crushing leaves to smell. There's drama in the way he describes the plants in his care: battles between neighbors, surprising alliances, uncertain futures and generational differences. I'm surprised by how diverse the species are; how well plants from far-flung continents coexist. Lemon trees, likely originating in India, grow alongside North American juneberry bushes and European herbs like parsley and rosemary.
Stretching ingredients
Scholtmeyer says how people eat is 'super important,' as the modern diet has its risks.
A growing body of research suggests ultra-processed foods raise the risk for a raft of health issues including diabetes, heart disease, cancer and even dementia. P72's vegetarian fare avoids processed meat substitutes in favor of fresh ingredients, showcasing their sui generis flavors.
He is also particularly interested in experimenting with traditional ways of stretching ingredients like pickling and fermentation , evidenced by the endless rows of colorful glass jars lining the open kitchen. For example, he shows me a jar of purplish turnip stalks, which usually get thrown away while the root vegetable's bulb and greens are used fresh. He softens the stalks by pickling them, infusing them with flavor so they can be used as a garnish or to add punch to summer soup.
Playing with food: Antony Scholtmeyer, culinary director of Patina Osaka, has a keen interest in fermenting and pickling vegetables. |
PATINA OSAKA
Other jars are filled with intriguing ferments like lemon kōji mold and salt-brined shiitake mushrooms, both of which turn up later in the vegan lunch course in an umami-rich vegetable charcuterie.The standout dish, however, is a simple charred turnip, paired with smoked eggplant and bell pepper coulis and topped with a curlicue buckwheat crostini and fireworks of celery flowers. Despite a fine dining presentation, it's earthy and abundant, bringing to mind freshly turned fields and the aroma of burning rice straw.
Even the desserts and afternoon tea follow the sustainable ethos. The signature cream puff is plant-based, made with soy milk rather than dairy cream, and pastries are flavored with used tea leaves, coffee grounds and discarded citrus rinds from the hotel. Where there is an option to circle waste back into production, they take it.
'Zero waste doesn't exist, but we're trying to reduce the amount of waste that we have by working with these techniques,' says Scholtmeyer. He's also working to pass the knowledge on, not just to his youthful, diverse team of chefs — cooks from England and Brazil work alongside homegrown talent — but to guests as well. The restaurant hosts weekly fermentation workshops, as well as classes on brewing tea from fresh herbs and other skills for avoiding processed food.
'When we started hiring people, our kitchen filled up first because everybody was so interested in our concept,' Scholtmeyer says. 'It showed that the younger generation is actually very interested in — and maybe concerned with — what's happening with the planet, the climate and the way people eat. It's a natural investment.'