Shirokiya is delivering a wonderful Christmas gift to all of Hawaii with the soon-to-open Vintage Cave Honolulu, one enterprise in what I am calling the new phenomenon of the un-restaurant.

It’s not a restaurant in the sense of being a commercial endeavor. Even with a prix fixe dinner menu set at $295 per person and wine pairings at about $100 per person — bringing dinner for two to about $1,000 with tax and generous tip — this endeavor would not be profitable with its mere 32 or so tables spread over 15,000 square feet of luxury. Put it this way: When general manager Charly Yoshida (formerly with Alan Wong’s and Stage restaurants) was ordering up linens, the vendor thought he was mistaken in describing the size, saying, “Oh, you mean 1,500 square feet!”

That might have been the case in the old calculus of squeezing in as many tables as close together as possible to maximize profits.

But Vintage Cave exists not for profit, but to espouse a philosophy, and we are all enriched by its existence.

Vintage Cave is in the basement of Shirokiya. What started as storage space and offices has been transformed by 150,000 bricks handmade in Pennsylvania and installed by Romanian craftsmen. Inspired by the cave paintings of Lascaux in southwestern France and Altamira in northern Spain, Vintage Cave is home to artwork by Picasso, Michelangelo and more, with a centerpiece of Mordecai Ardon’s triptych “Hiroshima,” capturing the essence of the vibrant city before the World War II atomic bomb drop, its destruction and the dark void of its aftermath.

It is a space built for peaceful contemplation and was originally conceived to be a Société Privée de l’Élévation d’Art, Cultive et le Plaisir, or Private Society Elevating Art, Culture and Pleasure, out of the belief that the speed and instant gratification/communication needs of modern society have laid waste to the essence of civilization as well as ideas of privacy, exclusivity and pleasure. The Vintage Cave aims to bring all these back to the dining experience, something to equate with royalty and past epochs, when nobility had time to indulge in books, the arts and long, luxurious meals.

A preview meal last week offered 26 dishes over 16 courses. Time elapsed: four hours. And I enjoyed every bite.

Dining will be open to the public beginning Dec. 10, but members will have first crack at reservations. Membership starts at $5,000, with special membership priced at $50,000 and charter membership set at $500,000. You can visit vintagecave.com for more details.

First, let me tell you who should not come. The closed-minded should stay away. Those who calculate value to the penny can save their accounting for $9 ramen. If you tend to swallow your food in one gulp, don’t expect to taste a thing. And those without artistic mien or a palate that responds only to deep-fried, fatty or sugary fare will not appreciate the novel flavors at play here. Just don’t go. You won’t get it, so for you it will be money wasted.

But if you are open to new flavor combinations and ideas and think of dining as theater and a series of acts, this is the place to be.

I consider this grand experiment to be equivalent to Spanish chef Ferran Adriá’s celebrated El Bulli in its scope and ambition. In the kitchen is local chef Christopher Kajioka, who some may remember from Roy’s and whose education also came in the kitchens of New York’s Per Se and San Francisco’s Aziza.

The night of the dinner, people kept asking me how it compares with other kaiseki or prix fixe menus I’ve experienced, and it simply doesn’t. This is above and beyond any meal I’ve ever had, from San Francisco to the best of Las Vegas, New York and Shanghai, cities all noted for culinary fabulosity.

The most I’ve ever personally paid for dinner is about $500 for two in Vancouver’s Lumiere restaurant, and, as much as I enjoyed it and remember it to this day, that experience did not compare to Vintage Cave, where every dish is presented as a gem meant to delight, challenge or provoke.

One example is a dessert of popcorn ice cream, with shio koji (rice fermented in sea salt, with the flavor of rice crackers) a la Mourad-Caine, a play on mentor Mourad Lahlou’s association with Moroccan cuisine. Not everyone will be able to appreciate a dessert more salty and savory than sweet, presenting a challenge to one’s expectations, and resulting in either “aha!” or “blech!” reactions.

Not every dish will have a “wow” factor diners might imagine, but taken in totality, the breadth of the menu and the entire food journey is one to remember. For now, meals will start with several amuse bouches. During a preview dinner these included a vanilla bean macaron with black caviar center; oyster with hibiscus, shiso and ginger; and my favorite, a light meringue with the savory purity of sun-dried tomato and basil. Less successful was black bean clam on a fish-skin cracker. The cracker had all the charm of an unsalted pork rind.

One of my favorite dishes was a sashimi platter with five selections including exquisite cold-smoked toro with red onion; amaebi with fennel; Kona kampachi topped with lemon, radish and shiso; and uni with ham film and black truffle. When dinner service starts, this will change with market availability and seasonal produce.

Due to its heavy, rich essence, one of the favorites of most guests was a slow-cooked Jidori egg yolk over celery root purée and minced ham, finished with a truffle-marmalade foam and Parmesan.

Foie gras took on the characteristic of dessert, as light and airy as a chocolate mousse with the explosion of salt crystals, accompanied by dots of maple syrup aged in 60-year-old bourbon barrels.

My other favorites included one of the plainer offerings of crisp-skinned Japan tilefish served with kabocha; a rice and Samoan crab porridge topped with a generous helping of shaved white truffle; and most surprising, something that looked like a potato gratin or lasagna but turned out to be layers of charred cabbage, with a pour of light konbu broth and miso crème fraîche. It was a combination that worked beautifully.

At the end of the meal came four desserts plus petit fours, including what looked like solid gelatin, but once you bit into it, a flood of grape and elderflower liqueur came gushing into your mouth. What an eye opener!

And I could have eaten a dozen of the divine black truffle macarons.

Sadly, my finances don’t allow for many return visits, but even if this is to be the only one, you can bet I will never forget it.

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Reach Nadine Kam at nkam@staradvertiser.com.