Tell us about your background.

As a child, I wanted to become a pastry chef. I was learning how to bake bread and cake when I was a student. When I was 17, I was training at a culinary school. That’s when I decided to move to France to get further training. Looking back, I think I made the right decision. I gained valuable experience there, but I was too young to know what’s right and what’s wrong because I didn’t even have the knowledge to make a decision. I was planning to go abroad right after graduating from school, but my teacher at that time told me, “There’s no point going abroad if you don’t know about your own country.” That made me stay in Japan – and I worked at a famous restaurant in Tokyo after graduation.

At that time, it was not usual for a graduate student to work at a famous restaurant in Tokyo. I was lucky to receive high reviews from my trainers and classmates to get the job. But that’s when I faced reality – it was far harder than I expected. I was working with some notable chefs from all over the world. I had never experienced failure in my life, but I did. I was working there until I was 20, and decided to move to Australia afterward.

I came across a famous restaurant, “Tetsuya’s Restaurant” in Sydney, Australia, when I was watching TV. I noticed that the owner-chef Tetsuya Wakuda was also from Shizuoka, which is where I came from. I was inspired by the fact that someone from my local was working as a great chef in Australia. A language barrier was also something that pushed me forward. When I was in France, I was frustrated because I couldn’t understand their language. I didn’t want to feel that frustration again, so I decided to move to Australia to learn English first.

Once I arrived in Australia, I was walking around and looking for a restaurant to work. I came across a quaint little French restaurant, told the chef with my poor English, “Can I work here?”. I started with a dishwashing job but worked there for about 5 years. One day, the chef told me, “There’s no point staying here anymore. If you really want to become a chef, you should go to France and work for a Michelin starred restaurant.” This really encouraged me. He gave me a reference to one of the Michelin starred restaurants, and thanks for that, I managed to start working at a prestigious restaurant in Paris.

When I was 25, I moved to France. Of course, there were stressful times, but as much as I was stressed, I was always inspired. If you have been to Paris before, you might know this, but in summer, even Michelin starred restaurants get closed because they are on holidays. You wouldn’t see any tourists there. I didn’t want to spend the off-season doing nothing, so I was introduced to an Italian restaurant in Italy, and I used to go there every summer to work.

My experience as a chef in France was invaluable – but when I thought of living there, I didn’t feel quite right. I think that was 2015, I moved to Berlin, Germany, as my friend was living here at that time. I initially planned to go to Bavaria, because the food culture in Berlin at that time wasn’t as exciting as it is now. I remember I felt the culture shock when I first moved from Paris.

After exploring different restaurants all around the city, I finally found a great German-Austrian restaurant called Schnee Weiss. At that time, restaurants in Denmark were considered to be the best in the world, and the chef at Schnee Weiss was trained in Denmark! I had never really thought of cooking Danish cuisine for my career; however, when I first tasted his cooking, I was like, “This is incredible.” I then decided to work there for 5 to 6 years.

Around that time, I started feeling like I wanted to have my own restaurant. But again, starting business in Germany requires me to have an in-depth knowledge of German people. From my experience of working abroad, I knew that working on business in a Japanese way in a foreign country would never work. I genuinely felt how valuable my team and my guests were in order to fully understand what German people would like to taste.

Looking back, I feel incredibly lucky to have such chefs and trainers; they made me who I am today. Having lived in Australia, France, and Germany, I know how hard it is to know about foreign countries and their cultures. Living there for 1 or 2 years isn’t enough. It took me years to finally fully understand the characteristics of German people and their food culture. You can only appreciate them by actually spending quite a bit of time in Germany. I think that was a good experience, after all.