Event: Kyoto

Kyoto – On a Wednesday morning in early April, a week after the launch of SoNoMa by SingleThread in Kyoto, Kyle Connaughton is reflecting on his lifelong relationship with Japan. Outside, cherry blossoms are blooming in the courtyard of the Capella Kyoto hotel, which houses SoNoMa in Miyagawacho’s historic kagai, or geisha district. A few minutes’ walk in either direction lie Kenninji, the city’s oldest Zen temple, and the venerable Kaburenjo theater, where Kyoto’s geiko (the regional term for geisha) performers still train. It’s hard to imagine a more storied Japanese address for an American chef to set up a restaurant.Connaughton rose to international prominence with SingleThread in northern California’s Sonoma County, a farm-to-table concept encompassing a restaurant and inn on the 24-acre farm run by his wife, Katina. The restaurant, which showcases California cuisine informed by the couple’s experiences living and working in Japan, earned three Michelin stars within three years of its opening in 2016.SoNoMa, which opened in March, is the couple’s first international project and the inverse of what they built in the United States: a 12-seat counter that filters Kyoto’s seasons and ingredients through a California sensibility. For Connaughton, it is also the closing of a very long loop — one that began, improbably, at a sushi bar in a Colorado ski town when he was 9. His father, who spent much of the 1980s traveling to Japan to outfit the country’s Olympic gymnastics training facilities, had taken him to Beaver Creek and, on a whim, to the only Japanese restaurant in the resort town. As Connaughton watched the chef slicing fish with precise, unhurried movements, something clicked, and he caught a glimpse of his future. Located in Kyoto’s historic geisha district, the SoNoMa experience begins in the front room of the restaurant, where guests are…