ISHIKAWA IDYLL

WHEN BENJAMIN FLATT

FOLLOWED HIS HEART to Noto 23 years ago, he didn’t expect that a fermented yet highly prized fish sauce made from squid innards would be one of the reasons he would stay. Hailing from a family of restaurateurs, the Australian chef had risen quickly through the ranks of some of the best kitchens in Sydney and was helming an Italian fine diner when he met Chikako Funashita, a beautiful and bright Japanese teacher living with his family as a homestay guest. They soon fell in love, and he asked her to marry him.

But first, Flatt needed the approval of her father and mother. So in 1996 the young couple packed up their things and moved to her hometown, a pretty little fishing hamlet called Hanami. Part of Ishikawa Prefecture, it’s set on the shores of the Noto Peninsula, a rugged, striking sliver of land that juts out from the western coast of Honshu into the Sea of Japan. Initially, Toshihiro and Tomiko Funashita weren’t impressed by the news that their daughter was to marry a strange foreigner. So Flatt tried to win them over the best way he knew how—through food. His would-be parents-in-law ran a (guesthouse), but Flatt could see that they were most passionate about brewing , a craft that had been in the family for generations. The inky-colored fish sauce—made by pickling squid guts with sea salt before letting them ferment naturally in century-old