【Reading】とめわん

【English Name】Tome-wan (Finishing Soup)

Tomewan is the soup served toward the end of a kaiseki-banquet (kaiseki) course. It is also written "tomewan." Served together with rice and pickles (ko no mono), the simultaneous serving of these three items is the signal that the banquet's dishes are being brought to a close.

The contents are most often miso soup. Kaiseki-banquet cuisine is essentially a meal structure for enjoying sake, with dishes suited to sake served in sequence in the first half. The appearance of the tomewan signifies that the dining stage has been entered, and the name is said to come from its role of "stopping the sake-drinking session."

Note that even within Japanese cuisine, the structure differs in kaiseki (cha-kaiseki), where rice and soup are served at the very beginning. In honzen cuisine, too, soup is a basic element of the meal, but the term tomewan is used mainly in the context of kaiseki-banquet cuisine.

At a sushi shop's omakase course or at a kappo restaurant, miso soup or aka-dashi is sometimes served at the very end of the meal, and this too can be said to be a custom that inherits the tradition of the tomewan. As kaiseki-banquet etiquette, it is held that one should refrain from sake once the tomewan is served.