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Shunju: New Japanese Cuisine takes you on a tour of the restaurants at the forefront of Japans cooking revolution. Designer Takashi Sugimoto has revolutionized the act of dining in Japan, and Masano Kawanas award-winning photography portrays the experience in vibrant color.

Shunju: New Japanese Cuisine brings you the experience of dining at one of Tokyos most innovative and exciting restaurants: Shunju. Everything about the Shunju restaurants is unique  their design, decoration, and lighting  and especially the cuisine. At the Shunju restaurants the menu changes with the seasons and the specials change daily depending on what is available from the market. The chefs choose from hand-picked farmed and wild vegetables that arrive each morning. The food, though quintessentially Japanese, is fresh and innovative, with unexpected touches from other cuisines.

The restaurants designs are modern, funky, and often quite bizarre. Sugimoto, the famed interior designer, has incorporated such unusual installations as original sidewalk gratings from the London subway and hand plastered mud walls. In this way, the designs represent the new lifestyle philosophy of Japans urban, cultivated youth: that within the chaotic city of design and food, more value should be placed on nature and time, on the textures of genuine materials, the flavors of natural foods.

Shunju won the 2004 James Beard award for Photography in a Cookbook for its stunning color images, shot throughout the four seasons. The modern recipes are as beautiful in presentation as they are to taste, making Shunju: New Japanese Cuisine a must for both professional chefs and dedicated amateurs. [via]