Kaiseki Furukawa

A counter held to the season

Chilled nagaimo somen arrives with okra and corn in tomato dashi before Shigeyuki Furukawa, Chef at Kaiseki Furukawa in Minneapolis, lets the meal move into its next register. His station is the second-floor chef’s counter at Kado no Mise, where the kaiseki program carries his name and his founding chef and co-owner title. Furukawa was born in Japan, became a kaiseki chef in Tokyo, then moved to Kyoto to work directly with master kaiseki chefs and deepen his command of the cuisine. The house does not name those teachers, but it does place his training inside the Tokyo and Kyoto lineages closest to the form. Kaiseki Furukawa opened in 2017 after five years in development, a long preparation for a room built around sequence rather than choice. Furukawa’s work here is not an extension of a broad Japanese menu. It is a formal progression, rooted in tea ceremony traditions from 16th-century Kyoto, with the chef’s counter as the place where timing, temperature, and season meet the guest directly.

Ten courses, each with its own task

The structure is a 10-course seasonal kaiseki tasting menu, and the course names matter: Sakizuke, Hassun, Wanmono, Tsukuri, Yakimono, Hiyashibachi, Sunomono, Shokuji, Mizugashi, and Okashi. They give the kitchen a grammar. One course opens the appetite, another gathers the season on a platter, another turns to clear broth, sashimi, the grill, a chilled vegetable preparation, vinegar, rice, fruit, and confection. In a July 2026 menu, the summer festival platter brought sawagani, chimaki sushi, and hamo pike eel; the clear dashi broth held hamo pike eel, lotus bud, zucchini, and yuzu. Salt-grilled whole ayu came with hajikami ginger. Later, hagama-cooked Yumepirika carried summer sweet corn beside tsukemono and hatcho miso soup. The method leaves little room for casual substitution because dashi, soy, fish, rice, and seasonal produce are not accessories here. They are the frame. Ingredient availability changes the expression, but the progression keeps its discipline.

The second-floor counter

The room sits above the street, separated from the lower level by more than stairs. At the second-floor chef’s counter, the meal asks for quiet attention. The format narrows the distance between the hands and the plate; each course reaches the guest after a short pass, not after a long procession through a dining room. The atmosphere follows the cuisine: restrained lighting, formal pacing, a counter built for watching the sequence rather than surveying a crowd. Minneapolis can feel far from Kyoto in weather and latitude, but the room makes the distance less important than the gesture. A chilled vegetable course with Kamo Nasu, blue prawn, manganji pepper, and kabocha squash can carry the season without explaining it. So can Japanese muskmelon and mizu yokan at the close. Furukawa’s next course is still measured by the counter at Kaiseki Furukawa.