It’s happened to all of us. You sit down to dinner in that restaurant everyone has spoken so highly of, ask for a glass of Martelo, order a couple of dishes… Everything points towards this turning into an unforgettable evening with your partner or friends, when suddenly you tune into the background music playing in the restaurant, and the moment is shattered completely.

Sometimes it’s so loud that you can hardly enjoy the conversation, at other times the genre and the songs not only clash with each other, but are totally out of tune with the setting.

Fed up with not being able to enjoy his meal because of the jarring music, the renowned musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto decided to take matters into his own hands and create The Kajitsu Playlist. It’s a playlist with the perfect music for his favourite restaurant, the Kajitsu, which serves vegetarian Shojin cuisine.

Sakamoto, who is famous forcreating the music for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Barcelona 1992, the soundtrack of The Last Emperor and being a member of the band, Yellow Magic Orchestra, among other projects, doesn’t usually make restaurant playlists but made an exception for Kajitsu.

He liked the food they served in the restaurant so much that he couldn’t stand the idea of it being paired with such bad music. “When I come across music I don’t like, normally I just leave, but the food in this restaurant is really something I like, and I have so much respect for their chef that I decided to do something”, Sakamoto said in an interview for The New York Times.

As soon as he got home, he sat in front of his computer and started to write an e-mail to the chef. “I love your food, I respect you as a chef and I love this restaurant, but I hate the music. It’s like the soundtrack to Trump Tower”, he commented in the e-mail. “Who chose this? Who took the decision to come up with such a terrible mix? Let me do it”, Sakamoto pleaded.

Faced with such an unusual request, the restaurant owners decided to accept and Ryuichi Sakamoto got to work, with the help of Ruy Takahashi. That’s how the terrible mix of Brazilian pop, American folk and jazz made way fora selection of songs with piano melodies in perfect harmony with the atmosphere, which you can enjoy on this Spotify playlist.

For months, the new musical selection that Sakamoto had made for Kajitsu went totally unnoticed; he wasn’t at all interested in publicizing it. However, thanks to this article by The New York Times, the list has ended up becoming public, so anyone can enjoy it.

So now you know, the next time you’re having a special meal, open a bottle of Martelo, put on The Kajitsu Playlist in the background and sit down to enjoy an evening of pure #Martelism.