France and Japan have long had a mutual love affair. It’s a bicultural reverence that spans craftsmanship and high fashion — think of Yohji Yamamoto, or Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, who first made their names in Paris; or French labels such as Agnès b and APC, both of which have had cult status in Tokyo. But it also, of course, extends to cuisine. In Paris, Japanese chefs are numerous among the city’s finest dining stars, from Takuya Watanabe at Hakuba, the Japanese restaurant at the Cheval Blanc hotel, and Toyomitsu Nakayama, the former personal chef to fashion designer Kenzo who now helms Toyo, a 20-seat spot in Montparnasse.
For their authentic ingredients, both rely on the same source: Anna Shoji, a Tokyo-born market producer and gardener based in Ligueil, a small village in the Loire Valley province of Touraine, an hour’s drive from Tours. There, on her 2-hectare plot, she grows vegetables that she hand harvests on Tuesdays, in preparation for their delivery to her roster of 10 or so chefs that same day.
Touraine has been known for centuries as the “garden of France” thanks to its favourable climate and fertile soils. Shoji moved there with her husband 10 years ago and they live with their eight-year-old daughter in a small country house adjacent to the parcel — a plot where she maintains six greenhouses (one for seedlings), a lotus pond and five small lotus pools, around 40 chickens and three goats. At first, the neighbours, accustomed mainly to winemaking, were a little perplexed.
“Everyone asks me, ‘What are Japanese vegetables?’ but, in the end, they’re the same families — we have a lot of cabbage, turnips, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes and aubergine — they are just different varieties,” says Shoji, dressed for the day in a white T-shirt, black trousers and wellies, her long hair covered by a wide-brimmed straw hat and scarf. “And actually, Japanese vegetables work very well in this climate. Malabar spinach is great as it is resistant to intense heat and drought. Its leaves and shoots are numerous, and we can harvest throughout the summer without needing to water or worry about diseases or insects.”
In the full swing of summer, her preferred season, the potager is abundant with around 15 different types of vegetables. There are specific Japanese delicacies, including an array of aromatics such as mitsuba, red shiso and green shiso, along with myoga, ginger flower buds — both zesty and floral with a hint of acidity — and snake beans, which can grow up to 50cm long.
“Some, like edamame [young soyabeans], are not easy to germinate,” she says. “They take a long time to grow, require a lot of water, and have a very short harvest window. So, we wait, and wait, and then suddenly it’s time to harvest, otherwise they won’t be good the next day.”
More familiar vegetables come in varieties that are smaller in size and sweeter in taste. Among them are momotaro tomatoes; “I call them candy tomatoes because they are so sweet and delicious,” she says. And mizu nasu, a small aubergine that is thin-skinned enough to bite into raw — and which currently features on the menu at Ogata, a three-storey destination dedicated to Japanese art de vivre located in the Marais.
“I love the summer Japanese cucumber best,” says Paris-based food designer Marie Méon, of Manger Manger Studio, who orders from Shoji for her Japanese-influenced food installations and menus, which she cooks up for fashion clients such as Hermès, Lemaire and Prada. “It reminds me so much of my childhood in Japan. I like to pair it with miso, myoga and shiso, which I cook up with cold somen noodles.”
Shoji grew up in the bustling Tokyo district of Shibuya, where she attended a French school. “My family had no connection to the land; I didn’t know anything about growing things, planting things, nothing at all,” she says. It was about 15 years ago, while she was working as a technical translator in Constantine, Algeria, and feeling homesick for Japanese flavours, that she started dabbling in vegetable cultivation. At a small community garden, she planted edamame, cucumber, shiso and radishes.
“I was surprised by how easy it was,” she recalls. “Little by little, I wanted to do more.” One of her fellow green fingers was a man from Okinawa, who helped her to grow varieties native to the Japanese island, including goya, a bitter melon that resembles a spiked cucumber, and luffa, a tropical squash. “You can use them as sponges when the squash is big; otherwise, when they’re young, they’re so tasty — you can eat them like turnips.”
Currently, she has a batch of Okinawa gombo — a pink okra — growing in the potager. “Okinawa is interesting because it’s very tropical; there are certain vegetables that can only be grown there,” says Shoji. “What’s great about Japan is that [it has] all kinds of climates at the same time, so almost all year round, you can eat lots of different things.”
In Ligueil — where she was inspired to move by childhood summer holidays in France — she works hyper-seasonally, so the chefs she supplies respond to what is available. “Anna’s vegetables are quite uncommon in France, and since her production is small, we adapt to what she has,” says head chef Arnaud Donckele, who oversees Hakuba with Watanabe. “At the moment, we serve her Japanese cucumber in the first part of the dinner degustation.”
The chefs also tend to be guided by Shoji herself: “I bring vegetables to them and they sample them right away, even the things that can’t be eaten raw,” she says. “My speciality is my knowledge of vegetables, how they are grown in Japan, and also this closeness to the chefs. I find how they come up with different menu ideas and dishes really interesting.”
At certain times throughout the year, Shoji also welcomes visitors to her plot to show them the harvest and let them try the latest produce. On occasion, you can purchase seasonal baskets on site, or through her other project, Mura, a “mini-ecovillage” outside the town of Laval-en-Brie, one hour east of Paris, which she co-founded with three other Japanese women.
Together they have taken over a former farm to explore Japan’s culinary culture. Envisioned as a place for day trips and weekend stays, with traditional outdoor baths (and still partly under construction), it already features a revolving programme of craft workshops and cultural activities — from making miso or mochi to the “atelier potager” on Shoji’s vegetable patch.
“I love gardening, but also sharing my knowledge — eating together, cooking and preserving,” she says. “I like explaining how to eat vegetables whole, with the leaves, with the stems, with the skin, the roots — for many, all parts are edible.”