How is a particular dish or drink created? By unraveling a restaurant’s signature you reveal the chef's personality and philosophy, their commitment to the ingredients, and even the attitude of the producers. Exploring the story behind the cuisine, the dots that shape Kabutocho turn into lines that connect them.

‘Dialogue of Food’ showcases some of the city's unique restaurants and eateries, spotlighting dishes and menus. In our 10th edition, we stop by ‘nib’, a new addition to the Nisshokan building, located on the site of the former Shibusawa Eiichi residence. We sat down with the team at ‘nib’ to uncover the full story of the innovative food experience, driven by the core ingredient of cacao, and set in an intimate restaurant made up of a small number of counter seats.

The Nisshokan building, located at the northern end of Kabutocho, sits on the site that was once the former residence of Eiichi Shibusawa, who is often regarded as “the father of the modern Japanese economy” and revered as one of Japan’s most famous industrialists. The building was rebuilt in 1928 after the original, luxurious residence was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake. The impressive atmosphere of the building makes a strong impression, telling a story of tradition and history.

In more recent years, the ground floor has become home to a variety of shops, with the chocolate and ice-cream shop, ‘teal’, being the first to occupy the building. ‘Teal’ uses high-quality ingredients matched with technique and a seasonal approach—a combination that has seen the shop rise in popularity, as evident by the queue of customers. ‘Teal’ co-creator and chocolatier Shohei Manago, is also responsible for the concept behind ‘nib’, which opened its doors in December 2024, just a few doors down from ‘teal’. The restaurant features eight counter-seats in a space where the aroma of cacao fills the air as soon as you pass through the door. The course menu, which explores all the possibilities of its ingredients, is served in an intimate setting by the chefs themselves.

Once seated, the first thing to catch your eye is the unique table decor, featuring a spread of cacao beans and kombu seaweed, alongside cutlery laid atop banana leaves. The course begins with guests roasting cacao beans on a portable grill, with the sounds of the beans rolling and the skins crackling and exploding filling the room. As the beans change color, a savory aroma gradually fills the air, and you are truly able to perceive the cacao with all five senses.

The idea is based on Manago’s personal experience that he had in Costa Rica, the region where cacao is cultivated. “I visited a cacao plantation run by the indigenous people there. I was given a paste made from ground cacao beans, which had been roasted by simply throwing them into a campfire and then mixed with honey and sugarcane. Even though not much had been done to it, it tasted so good! Based on that feeling, I began to think about the possibilities of cacao as an ingredient, and started to wonder about various methods of serving it, such as charring it, steaming it, and making tea from it.”

One of the course menu items is the ‘cacao drink’, which is made by carefully extracting the cacao skin in water and then heating it. The drink is completed by guests adding a single roasted bean to the tea to taste. The soft, heated cold-brew tea has a wild aroma from the roasted cacao, also adding a depth of flavor. Even the water served at ‘nib’ has a surprising twist. The chef’s close friend, a lumber miller, collects and filters water produced as a by-product from the process of drying cedar trees. The slightly woody flavor has hints familiar to Japanese culture, and matches well with the taste of the roasted cacao, giving a clean aftertaste that enhances the drink’s sweetness. Even those allergic to cedar pollen (a common allergy in Japan), can enjoy this drink without worry.

The next dish showcases the true depth of cacao as a versatile ingredient. In Japan, cacao is often only thought of as an ingredient in chocolate, one of the world’s most popular sweets, but in fact, cacao can be transformed into a variety of forms, such as pulp, skin, nibs, and even butter, where the oil component is pressed into a butter-like texture. Each form has its own uniqueness and flavor. The plate showcases Manago’s deep knowledge of the ingredients, gained by the experience he has attained as a chocolatier.

It truly is a cacao spectacle that explores all possibilities and perfects each flavor. The fruity pulp of the bean is a perfect match for lychee, banana, lime, and passion fruit, all of which are tropical plants that grow in symbiosis with the cacao trees. The cacao butter, with its low melting point, makes it difficult to handle. However, it also gives it a melt-in-the-mouth texture and is perfect in cookie dough or yokan (a Japanese sweet made from sweet beans). Even when making ganache, the team at ‘nib’ tries to bring out the full flavor of the ingredient without making it overly sweet.
“We’re trying to create a kind of experimental chef’s table using cacao, so actually, only about 10% of the dishes on the course menu contains chocolate. We’re not specializing in sweets, so the sweetness is also relatively restrained. Furthermore, even though we call ourselves a laboratory, we’re trying to make sure that the food isn’t so innovative that it becomes alienating—we want everyone to be able to enjoy the experience, even those who don’t like desserts.”

Tarts are also served, topped with the ground cacao that guests themselves have roasted. Engaging with the ingredient itself, guests can deepen their understanding of cacao, before tasting the finished product. It’s a fresh experience that makes you feel like you’re the assistant in the laboratory of an experimental chef and researcher.

The main course is also a product of Manago’s memories of his visit to Costa Rica, sublimated into a multi-layered taste experience. Seaweed is used as an ingredient to express the scent of the sea breeze that blows through the cacao plantations facing the Caribbean Sea. “When I thought about opening this new type of cacao lab in Kabutocho and taking it to the world stage, the concept of incorporating Japanese elements naturally came to mind,” says Manago.
The creativity and ingenuity of the chef-patissier shine through in the dish; the grilled banana cured with kombu rehydrated in a cacao broth, paired with a cream made from kombu syrup and cacao husks all coming together to create a dish that looks like a piece of art.

Manago says that each item served at ‘nib’ is created with the aim of expressing a moment. “If I think about what kind of flavor I want to create, it will end up being similar to what I’ve already done at ‘teal’. Here, I want to focus on the concept of ‘cacao cuisine’ and I enjoy the process of trying to create something that’s completely different. In this dish, I wanted to convey the feeling I had when I visited a cacao plantation on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. I hope that people will be able to smell the scent of the sea in the breeze, the crunching sound of cacao leaves underfoot as you walk, and the freshness of the occasional rain.”

When you break open the thin, crispy cacao tuile and meringue that covers the plate, you get the sensation of treading on the earth of a tropical plantation. The lower layer is made of fresh chocolate, cheesecake, and cacao pulp paste, recreating the feeling of breaking open a fruit. The Japanese seaweed ‘aosa’ is scattered like leaves and its slightly savory saltiness surprisingly complements the other elements on the plate. The kelp and cacao pulp gelato topping blends smoothly with the other ingredients without being too sweet, and you can easily finish the large plate in one go.

“We try to combine Japanese cuisine with cacao and often get comments from surprised customers like ‘Does kelp go with cacao?’ We discovered that a type of white cacao called ‘macambo’, which is similar to the original species of cacao, has a flavor similar to kelp or dried bonito when roasted, and we felt that it would go well with seaweed. Our Japanese food culture is already familiar with elements like umami and astringency, so it’s not unfamiliar or strange to us. I think that by incorporating these elements, the taste of the cacao will feel somehow nostalgic.” Manago is also steadily developing new menus, and he has plans to create menus that evoke the rainy season on cacao farms, using charcoal as a main ingredient.

The experience is an unprecedented experiment that feels like modern art, and where cacao is the medium. It gives you the chance to relive an experience, as told through the lens of a chef patissier, in a setting that feels more like a laboratory than a restaurant.