Why chef-owner of one of Tokyo’s most exclusive restaurants is opening a Hong Kong branch

Why Hong Kong? “I want to challenge myself by opening a restaurant here. The quality of the ingredients is important in Japanese food and Hong Kong has very similar ingredients in the market, so the restaurant here can have comparable quality to Japan.”

Tell us about the original Sanpi-Ryoron. “I started my restaurant concept in Tokyo 13 years ago. At that time there weren’t many restaurants where you could eat a multi-course set meal at a casual price. The concept is very casual, where everyone is served the same thing.

“To keep costs down I kept the design of the restaurant simple, and I didn’t need to hire many people, either. When you seat nine to 10 guests at the counter you just need one chef. Also, when you serve a set meal with several dishes, the breakdown cost for the ingredients is lower, and you only change the dish once every two weeks in Japan. In Hong Kong, we will change it monthly, so in the end there will be 12 [set meals] per year, using seasonal ingredients.”

How did you get into cooking? “My father was the chef and owner of an izakaya [an informal gastropub], and I also wanted to learn how to cook. Every day my father made my school lunch, which was all food from the izakaya – no one else had lunch like mine.

“When the izakaya was busy, he would get me to help wash dishes [starting from] when I was in primary school. He was very strict even then. But now, looking back, it was a precious time because he was teaching me. After high school, my father introduced me to a traditional restaurant to work as an apprentice, learning various cooking techniques. I did that for nine years. What I learned was kaiseki style [a tradi­tional multi-course dinner], which is very different from izakaya.”