In cooking, timing is every thing. A lot in order that if the chef Kei Kobayashi spots diners heading to the restroom as he sends a dish out from the kitchen, he stops them. Nature’s name can wait; his culinary choices must be tasted at peak taste.
Such imperiousness and exactitude align with what Mr. Kobayashi, the primary Japanese chef to earn three Michelin stars for a restaurant in Paris, mentioned he had discovered from certainly one of his earliest mentors in France: The chef is king.
“Until you decide to your worldview to this extent, you gained’t be capable of be a chef,” Mr. Kobayashi, 46, mentioned throughout a latest interview in Tokyo.
Having earned his third star — the utmost — for his Restaurant Kei in Paris in 2020, he has now expanded his ambitions again to Japan, the place he has opened 4 eating places over the previous two years.
The purpose, Mr. Kobayashi mentioned, is to change into a model. In that sense he appears to be emulating Alain Ducasse, at whose now-closed Paris restaurant, Plaza Athénée, Mr. Kobayashi labored earlier than opening his personal in 2011.
He additionally joins a line of inventive Japanese — together with the artists Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami — who first discovered fame outdoors their homeland.
Mastering the artwork of French cooking has change into one thing of a Japanese specialty. In Tokyo, which has extra Michelin-starred eating places than some other metropolis on the earth, 4 of the dozen eating places awarded three stars function French delicacies.
Mr. Kobayashi needs to indicate how French meals can evolve with seasonal Japanese elements, he mentioned within the interview, simply hours earlier than the official opening of Kei Assortment Paris, his new restaurant on the highest ground of the Toranomon Hills Station Tower in Tokyo.
At Kei Assortment, he has sneaked some traditional Japanese consolation dishes onto the menu, together with curry and breaded beef cutlet, alongside fancier objects like butter-roasted giant clams, smoked bonito with white cheese foam, or delicate hand rolls of tuna and caviar.
For the restaurant’s opening, Mr. Kobayashi, his hair dyed platinum blonde, wore a standard chef’s double-breasted white coat embroidered with three Michelin stars over black trousers and inexperienced suede New Steadiness sneakers. An Audemars Piguet watch was strapped to his wrist.
He spoke modestly, rejecting descriptors like “top notch” or “genius” and saying he by no means allowed himself to suppose he had reached the top of cooking. However Mr. Kobayashi appeared coiled and somewhat aloof, belying his humble phrases.
His uncompromising strategy is embodied by what he mentioned was his favourite French phrase: “aller plus loin” — go additional.
“If you happen to make a compromise, or suppose ‘OK, that is good,’ then it’s time to give up,” he mentioned.
His consideration to element extends past the meals. “He cares concerning the furnishings choice and the inside, the softness of the couch,” mentioned Tadashi Nobira, supervisor of Esprit C. Kei Ginza, one other certainly one of Mr. Kobayashi’s new eating places in Tokyo. “He cares to the final centimeter.”
Simply minutes earlier than a visitor arrived for a solo lunch with the chef on opening day at Kei Assortment earlier this spring, Mr. Kobayashi was adjusting the quantity of a curated jazz assortment enjoying within the eating room.
Mr. Kobayashi grew up in Nagano in central Japan, the place his father labored as a chef. His mom cooked do-it-yourself meals each evening, together with his favourite, curry rice. However Mr. Kobayashi mentioned he didn’t study to cook dinner from both of them.
As a substitute it was a documentary concerning the French chef Alain Chapel that first captivated Mr. Kobayashi, who envied the chef’s crisp white jacket. Forgoing highschool, he took a job at a neighborhood French restaurant, the place, as he recalled, he spent 4 years wherein “the chef simply saved getting mad at me.”
At 19, Mr. Kobayashi moved to Tokyo to work for Ikuo Shimizu, a principally self-taught chef who gave his apprentice fundamental coaching in easy methods to work with meat and fish.
“He was very mischievous, however he had a robust spine,” Mr. Shimizu mentioned in an interview at his eight-seat restaurant in a quiet neighborhood in Tokyo, the place he serves rustic French meals. “I assumed he was actually an artisan. He was explicit concerning the particulars, like the form of the knives and easy methods to sharpen them.”
Having fixated on French delicacies, Mr. Kobayashi determined he wanted to maneuver to France. An acquaintance helped him land a job at Auberge du Vieux Puits within the Languedoc-Roussillon area, the place he labored for 4 years underneath the tutelage of the chef Gilles Goujon, who has additionally earned three Michelin stars.
In a video interview, Mr. Goujon mentioned he was instantly struck by the younger cook dinner with bleached hair.
With a contact of stereotyping about Japanese prowess, Mr. Goujon first assigned Mr. Kobayashi to the fish station, instructing him with gestures and cookbook illustrations. Even on days off, “he wished to return and work,” Mr. Goujon mentioned. “So we needed to lock the restaurant so he may go and relaxation.”
After two seasons on the fish station, Mr. Kobayashi tried to persuade his boss that he had developed allergy symptoms and wanted to change to meat and sport. Mr. Goujon was amused, and he finally moved Mr. Kobayashi to the meat station to discover ways to debone birds, deer and wild boar.
Mr. Kobayashi additionally labored briefly at a patisserie in Provence and at a restaurant in Brittany. The latter didn’t go effectively, he mentioned. “On the time, there was a motion to make French delicacies extra scientific, and I didn’t agree with that,” he mentioned. “I went to study Breton delicacies, not science.”
He labored at Mr. Ducasse’s Plaza Athénée for seven years earlier than going out on his personal, shopping for a restaurant whose chef was retiring.
“Possibly I used to be silly,” he mentioned, “however I figured the cooking would work itself out.” He was anxious, nonetheless, about whether or not he may assist the workers he was hiring, who “had been placing their lives on the road.”
Inside a 12 months, he earned his first Michelin star; the second got here 5 years later. After the third, he determined to make the transfer again to Japan.
Along with Kei Assortment Paris and Esprit C. Kei Ginza, Mr. Kobayashi has opened a restaurant on the Ritz-Carlton resort in Tokyo and one in Gotemba, close to Mount Fuji. The Gotemba and Ginza eating places are collaborations with Toraya, a centuries-old Japanese confectionary firm.
With Mr. Kobayashi spending most of his time in Paris, he handpicked cooks to run the kitchens on the new Japanese eating places, counting on them to develop dishes primarily based on native elements.
Teruki Murashima, 50, the chef de delicacies at Héritage by Kei Kobayashi on the Ritz, mentioned he talked incessantly by telephone with Mr. Kobayashi and despatched him pictures of dishes and lists of elements.
“We each might make fully totally different dishes with the identical elements,” Mr. Murashima mentioned in an interview on the Ritz. “However we all know that about one another, and we respect one another.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Murashima mentioned, Mr. Kobayashi is “very explicit about sure issues, and actually will get fairly indignant if issues don’t attain his requirements.”
At instances, Mr. Kobayashi is susceptible to remind clients of these requirements. If a diner takes out a cellphone to snap an image of a dish, mentioned Mr. Nobira, the Ginza restaurant supervisor, Mr. Kobayashi would possibly seem on the desk, encouraging the client to take a chew straight away as a substitute.
Is he, then, a king? “I may be shut to 1,” he mentioned.
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting from Paris.
