TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- No matter what you call it, dirt is dirt and it's not something you'd expect to find on your plate in a plush restaurant. But one eatery in Tokyo has built a menu quite literally from the ground up.
Toshio Tanabe studied the culinary arts in France. These days at his fine dining restaurant in Tokyo, he's dishing up the dirt; literally. Buckets full of it. "This is a seafood restaurant," he says, "So we have the flavors from the ocean. I was also looking for flavors from the earth."
Germaphobes can take some comfort, perhaps. The special soil is lab tested and heated to extreme temperatures before being mixed into the menu.
But Tanabe's special tasting course is anything but ' cheap', about $110 per person.
A starter of dirt soup, he says, is potato with dirt sauce. And the main course is flounder and risotto with more dirt. And yes, it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. And to top it all off, a scoop of dirt ice cream.
And what do diners think? One person says, "It is a unique ingredient, and it's pretty tasty."
And when we ask Tanabe what's next, he says he's not sure, this idea just came about naturally; taking the idea of organic to a whole new level.