Paris
Chef Kei Kobayashi became the first Japanese chef ever to win the maximum three Michelin stars in France on Monday.
The flamboyant 42-year-old, who was born in Nagano Prefecture, was the biggest winner on a night when Japanese cooks triumphed in the backyard of French haute cuisine.
Kazuyuki Tanaka won two stars for Racine, his restaurant in the northeastern city of Reims, as did Yasunari Okazaki for his sushi and crossover cuisine at L’Abysee au Pavillon Ledoyen in Paris.
Kobayashi — a striking figure with bleached blond hair — said Japanese cooks have earned their place at the top table of French cuisine.
“There are lots of Japanese chefs now in France and you have accepted us and given us a place,” he said as he picked up the highest distinction in French cooking.
“Thank you, France,” he added. Kobayashi admitted that his perfectionism can make him a “difficult person” to work with. “I am quite hard. I ask a lot of my team, and then I ask a lot more,” he joked. A dozen top Japanese cooks in France have shaken up the elite ranks of the Michelin in recent years, led by two-star chefs Takao Takano in Lyon and Masafumi Hamano at the Au 14 Fevrier near Macon in rural Burgundy.
Last year, Keigo Kimura at the Asperule in Dijon and Takafumi Kikuchi at La Sommeliere in Lyon won their first stars for helping to re-define and reinvent French cuisine.
Kobayashi opened his restaurant, Kei, in the center of the French capital nine years ago, and wowed diners with such dishes as sea bass cooked on its scales and smoked salmon with roquette mousse and a tomato vinaigrette with lemon emulsion. Critics hailed the precision of his cooking and the way he made relatively simple dishes like gnocchi, truffle, bellota ham and Parmesan cheese extraordinary.
He said after his Michelin victory Monday that he didn’t like his cooking “categorized” as either French or Japanese, “just the best.” The famous red guide described him as a “virtuoso of flavours” and his cooking as both “delicate and memorable.” “It’s very simple. Every dish that Kei turns the rigour of his attention to is called on to become a signature one,” it added.—AFP
