Koryouri Urara

Koryouri Urara at 1608 Wisconsin Avenue NW operates in the koryouri format, a Japanese term that translates roughly as small-scale cooking or home cooking and that describes the intimate restaurant format where a small kitchen produces carefully prepared small dishes in the style of a skilled Japanese home cook rather than a restaurant with a large brigade. The format is common in Kyoto’s Pontocho dining alley and in the side streets of Tokyo’s upscale neighborhoods, where the small restaurant with six to twelve seats and a chef-owner who sources the ingredients personally represents the most personal form of Japanese restaurant dining.

The small-plates approach in the koryouri format allows the kitchen to serve the seasonal Japanese menu that the format traditionally presents: the dishes change with what is fresh and appropriate to the season, which in the Japanese culinary tradition means attending to the specific ingredients that the season provides in much the same way that kaiseki, Japan’s most formal multi-course cuisine, organizes its menu around the year’s progression through spring, summer, fall, and winter. The koryouri format delivers this seasonal sensitivity in a less formal, more intimate setting.

Wisconsin Avenue in the upper Georgetown block at 1608 is in the residential-commercial section between the boutique cluster and the Glover Park neighborhood boundary, which gives the restaurant a quieter setting than the tourist-facing commercial blocks further south. The address is appropriate for the intimate koryouri format, which typically generates its business through word of mouth and repeat visits from the neighborhood’s dining community rather than through the foot traffic of the main commercial streets.

The sake selection at a koryouri restaurant is typically integrated with the food program, with specific sake styles recommended alongside different dishes in the same way that a wine bar might suggest wine pairings. The Japanese craft sake tradition, which encompasses the full range from the dry and savory junmai styles to the fruity and floral daiginjo styles, provides a beverage program that complements the koryouri kitchen in the way that French wine complements French cooking.

Hours run Tuesday through Thursday and weekend evenings from 6pm. The koryouri format’s strength is in its intimacy: the chef at Koryouri Urara sources the ingredients that the season provides and designs the evening’s menu around them in the same way that a skilled home cook makes the daily market trip before deciding what to prepare for dinner. The omakase spirit, even when the restaurant does not formally describe its service as omakase, is present in the koryouri approach: trust the kitchen to make the seasonal decision and the meal will reflect the best of what the moment offers rather than the menu’s attempt to be all things at all times. The Wisconsin Avenue location at 1608 is above the boutique cluster, in the quieter residential-commercial zone that gives the restaurant the neighborhood character appropriate to the format. Hours run Tuesday through Saturday evenings.