Can you share what you’re working on right now in the Buddha Bar family of restaurants?
I am the worldwide executive chef at Buddha Bar Group of restaurants. My main responsibility, currently, is curating Japanese, Nikkei and pan Asian cuisine for all of our outlets around the world. Apart from that, I regularly visit our chefs and coach the young chefs in the kitchen, and I also host various events like the Nikkei tour at Barfly by Buddha Bar at Venetian Village. Lastly, I constantly check the quality of food served at our restaurants.
Tell us more about Nikkei-style cuisine and how popular it is worldwide?
Born of the Japanese diaspora to South America, Nikkei cuisine is bold, vibrant and lip-puckeringly tasty. ‘Nikkei’ literally means a Japanese person born outside Japan, yet it has come to encapsulate not just the people, but the food that Japanese emigrants and their children cooked — first in Peru, then Brazil and Argentina — in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century.
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Nikkei is flying because it’s the perfect cuisine for now; it’s healthy and communal, exotic yet with enough recognisable components to be accessible. As Rio passed the Olympic torch onto Tokyo (hosts of the 2020 games), a spotlight will fall on two nations already linked by a mesh of culinary cross-cultural references.
What inspired you to enter the culinary industry?
My family owned a Japanese restaurant in Tokyo, and from an early age I grew up with my parents encouraging me to get into the restaurant business. They were my earliest influence about Japanese cuisine and taught me all the tricks of the trade, such as how to pick fresh ingredients, from the age of five. Since then I’ve never looked back, and I love everything about my job and the F&B industry.
What advice would you give to young chefs who want to enter the industry?
Passion for food is very important. Being a chef is more than just a job description — it’s a power to create something delicious, twist flavours and offer something for every diner. I always encourage chefs to eat at different restaurants, and pick up something they like to adapt and take the risk to try something new. Modern technology has many benefits, so researching the cuisine they are interested in and building a menu around it is an exercise I strongly want young chefs to get into a habit of.
Top three ingredients in your kitchen you can’t live without?
Rice, soy sauce and fish.
What has been your most memorable F&B experience to date and why?
Before becoming the worldwide chef at Buddha Bar, I was a consulting chef and one of my clients in Italy had a crazy idea to have a Japanese-Italian fusion cuisine with new creations. Since I like twisting flavours, I came up with a few dishes and the clients were shocked to see how I gave humble Italian cooking a Japanese influence. The next day, they wanted me to take their sons into my kitchen but they didn’t want me to pay them salaries — instead my client would pay me to teach them my twists and tricks. This has to be one of the most memorable experiences in my F&B career so far!
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