Many years ago, when I was a high school student in the cosmopolitan borough of Queens, I ate my first piece of sushi. Granted, it contained no raw fish. It was a cucumber roll, but it was wrapped in seaweed and I used chopsticks to transport it from plate to mouth (with a stop in the soy sauce pool when I could manage that advanced move). My introduction to "sushi" came thanks to my friend Dayna, a classmate of mine at the Kew Forest School, who was on the cutting edge of cool in every way. For instance, she wore E.G. socks, Ton Sur Ton tops, and shopped regularly at Camp Beverly Hills in Great Neck, obvious signs of true enlightenment to my 16-year old self.

In any case, there we were, Dayna, Marty, Melissa and I (we were a gaggle of four girls on most outings) at Narita, the local Japanese place on 70^th Road, right next to the Pizzeria Uno's where I took my first restaurant job, enjoying a taste of a far away land: cucumber rolls all around, and when we got really crazy, a California roll and a bowl of udon! It was 1986, Rick Springfield and Foreigner ruled the airwaves, and we were living on the culinary edge. I thought back to those glory days and had to laugh to myself as I ate my way through a dazzling 10-course Kaiseki meal at David Bouley's new temple of Kyoto cuisine, Brushstroke. Narita, it was not.

Like myself (clearly), David Bouley has had a love affair with Japanese cuisine for many years. His newest restaurant, Brushstroke, is an incredibly thoughtful expression of that passion. It is the product of over a decade of research and collaboration between DB and the Tsuji Culinary Institute in Japan. Indeed, over the past twelve years, the concept has been under development at Tsuji with over 5000 recipes created for Brushstroke along the way.  Talk about an epic process.  

Brushstroke's kaiseki menu follows Japan's traditional 20-phase seasonal calendar, and many of the dishes produced by a team of chefs led by Isao Yamada, a meticulously trained Kaiseki chef who studied the art of beauty, creativity, and umami alongside Kaiseki master Hitoshi Ishihara of Mizai in Gion, would do just fine placed on pedestals alongside works of masters like Picasso and Miro. This food is truly exquisite, not only to admire from afar, but to devour from close proximity as well.

A caveat before I continue. Most of the time, I do feel that words can do justice to the food I have eaten, but I will say here, at the beginning of this review, that I am not a writer with enough talent to do justice to the food I will attempt to describe to you. I know Ruth Reichl could, and the author Nicole Mones, who wrote "The Last Chinese Chef" and brought every meal in that book to life so that I was practically licking my fingers as I turned the pages. I will try, but I do urge you to go and eat here for yourselves. It's not just the food that is exquisite, it's the space, the service, the dinnerware (all of the dishes are handmade ceramics or beveled glass and gold etched and are all washed by hand, no dishwashers here)-and it is the combination of these elements that makes the evening quite magical. I found it utterly otherworldly.

First, a little about the space, which was designed and built by Super Potato to reflect the centuries-old history of Kaiseki cuisine with materials like aged iron, reclaimed lumber, antique books (they scoured the Strand for some 20,000 paperbacks that form the somewhat spongy walls of the lounge), rocks, stones, and even some mud to bring Brushstroke to life. The effect is a sense of harmony and peace. Walls are lined with honey colored wood and hand-laid stone in various shades of soft grey that add an organic element that seems to root the space to the earth.

The kitchen, which is open and overlooks the vaulted dining room and food bar, is staffed by mostly Japanese men (with a sole woman in the mix) who cook with the seriousness of a team of surgeons in the O.R., all dressed in pressed white shirts and ties topped with pristine single breasted chef coats that adds to the surgical vibe of the experience. The chefs also wear those white soda jerk caps that make you feel as though they might scoop you up a deluxe sundae after slicing through a nice slab of toro.

In the lounge before dinner, we relaxed over a few exceptional cocktails, in particular the Sweet Tomato ($15) which tastes as though this heavy summer fruit was pulled from straight from the vine and magically zapped into drinkable form. If you prefer a couch to a barstool, you will find several cozy nooks and Japanese tatami booths for relaxing and nibbling sushi and a bar menu that includes several of the dishes off of the main menu at remarkably reasonable prices ($8-$22). Surprisingly, the bar was filled with families with toddlers in tow on the evening I was in, in addition to after-work suits and friends from the ‘hood. It made me wish I lived in Tribeca so we could bring Emily for an early dinner. She loves it at Hibino, and I know she would really love it at Brushstroke.

Actually, the dining room is also quite kid-friendly. An older gentleman, in a formal pinstriped suit that was probably handmade in Japan, was dining with what appeared to me to be his son, though my friend Steven thought grandson, who was all of 10 years old and in shorts, crocs and a tee-shirt. I assure you he was not eating cucumber rolls, but he was impressively enjoying same meal that Steven and I were eating, as the dining room offers only two options for dinner, both served Kaiseki-style in either eight ($85) or 10 courses ($135). You will do fine with either choice, and trust me, the price tag is well worth it.

A Kaiseki's chef skill is not only the artful meal he makes for you, but his ability to create different meals for you at every visit. So, if you were to dine at Brushstroke tonight and return (as I would like to) in a few weeks, the challenge would be first for your chef to recall your presence, and then to prepare a completely different meal. It's a major faux pas to repeat a course for a regular guest. It's a tradition that keeps the chefs on their toes, and assures the dinner guest a culinary adventure with every visit.

Our adventure, err, dinner, began with two jewel-like courses. The first, a couple of slices of alabaster sea bass wrapped roll-up style around field mustard greens (think a less bitter broccoli rabe) in a vibrant pickled plum sauce; the second a gold-trimmed beveled glass bowl filled with asparagus terrine blanketed with briny sea urchin in a puddle of cauliflower puree. It was like a brilliant thunderstorm followed by a rainbow.

Soup and dumplings were next: a soft, tender orb made from scallop, bster and mountain yam (of course) that I'd like, heretofore, to replace my matzo balls on Passover, please. In fact, all of my future commitments to chicken soup are hereby reneged as well; I'll take the sensational cherry clam dashi instead. I shamelessly gobbled up this course. While the food was elegant, refined, and delicate, I was not. I ate with gusto, as my friend Julie would proudly say.

Every Kaiseki meal also includes a sashimi  course, and ours included luscious slices of yellowtail and equally gorgeous toro: rose colored and marbled with pearly fat that melted in my mouth in the way I imagine warm caramel might.

You may think you know black cod from its days at Nobu where it is beautifully glossed with miso, but it is reinvented at Brushtroke with a sesame marinade, a pistachio crust, and a crown of sea urchin. The supple fish is just exquisite, and while the off-the-wall but brilliant marriage of pistachio with sea urchin would have never occurred to me, I haven't been working on this menu for 12 years.

Hang on, kids, we have several more courses to go. Before you get overwhelmed by the thought of this much food, let me assure you that the courses are paced well so that you won't be at Brushstroke to watch the sun rise, and the portions are tidy and appropriate. By the end of the meal, you may still want even more. But it's better that way.

I only had one quibble with the meal and that was with the next course, a Pacific jumbo oyster the size of a baseball cap. Rather alarming, actually. But it wasn't the oyster's size that was the issue, it was the plum wine gelee that smothered its surface, stifling the life out of it so its flavors just went mute. Luckily, this course was followed by one of my favorites of the night: a steamed chawan-mushi egg custard. This creamy egg pudding, almost the texture of crème brulee, sits at the bottom of a small ceramic cup and is topped with generous lumps of sweet Dungeness crab and submerged into a wildly rich truffle broth that recalled a deep Pacific Northwest forest in the early days of summer.

Now come the meat courses, two in total. The first was roast duck breast fanned out over charred and sweetly smoky eggplant in a miso dressing ratcheted up with a hit of mustard, and the second a portrait of Waygu two ways: domino-sized chunks seared and dressed in a feisty garlic and sansho pepper sauce, along with thin rare Carpaccio slices in a vivid citrus ponzu, a dish that I would have gladly eaten for days.  Honestly, I hope when I return they forget to change things up.

The final savory course of the evening-the rice course-is next, and it's only one you'll get to choose. Yes, all other courses are chosen for you, which to me, is heavenly. At the end of the day, all I really want is for someone else to take care of me, and at Brushstroke, they are quite adept at this. So, for your one choice of the evening you are given options like a platter of nigiri or chirashi, but I would recommend at least one Do-nabe Pot, a rustic rice dish that's rather like the Japanese cousin of paella, cooked in a gorgeous ebony clay pot so that there's a nice little crust on the bottom. You can choose lobster or steamed Dungeness crab and we chose the latter. The serving size is quite generous (we had plenty of leftovers for Emily) and the rice is loaded up with so much crab, it's almost embarrassing. I hope that one day they offer the option of also taking home that gorgeous clay vessel. It would make a lovely addition to my kitchen. (Hint, hint.)

Dinner ends with a soymilk panna cotta so delicious I would return just for this alone, and I am not one to go for panna cottas. I don't usually like their texture, but this one, truly, it was magnificent - a little clay bowl filled up to the top with a jiggley pudding of perfect texture (buoyant, almost ethereal), ideal temperature (cold, but not frigid), and marvelous flavor (sweet, but balanced). It's what I imagine they might serve at the Pearly Gates, if dessert is even an option at that point.

Oops, I think I just lied. (No Pearly Gates for me.) Dinner actually doesn't end with the panna cotta. It ends with a cup of frothy Matcha Green Tea served in a potter's bowl the size of a café au lait cup on HGH, with a little lacquer box filled with rectangular rice crackers sweetened with red bean dust (natutrally). These are delicate, the texture of a kettle cooked chip, but with a sneaky sweetness that sends you home feeling like the afternoon sun is shining through the dark Tribeca night.

One of these days, I'll have to reunite Dayna and the gang for a dinner at Brushstroke. Perhaps we'll even share a cucumber roll for old time's sake. Nah, probably not.

Brushstroke is located at 30 Hudson Street, 212-791-3771.

Andrea Strong