‘Like being a football coach’: Four Seasons Tokyo hotel chef Daniel Calvert on running the kitchens for two restaurants
- Daniel Calvert is making a fresh start with the menu for French fine-dining restaurant Sézanne, with the focus on seasonal ingredients sourced in Japan
- Communication has been a challenge for the chef, but he says cooking is a universal language – and for everything else, there is Google Translate
Daniel Calvert, formerly head chef at Belon, misses the food in Hong Kong. No, he corrects himself, he misses everything about the city.
Still, the Briton (who left the neo-Parisian restaurant in August) is excited to be in Japan, where he will open two restaurants in the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Marunouchi in June and July.
“It’s a much bigger city than Hong Kong,” he tells the Post on a video call from the hotel. “You realise living in Hong Kong is like living in a village. When I lived in New York [working at restaurant Per Se], this is how I feel again. It’s such a big city, there’s a lot of stuff going on, but nothing at the same time. In Hong Kong, you feel there is so much more energy.”
Calvert is overseeing two restaurants that will replace the hotel’s Motif Restaurant and Bar at the 57-room hotel. The first is Sézanne, a French fine-dining restaurant where he will be spending most of his time, and the other is Maison Marunouchi, an elevated all-day-dining bistro.
Sézanne is named after a town in the Champagne region of northeast France where Calvert has family ties.