How Singapore’s chilli crab inspired one of Sri Lanka’s best restaurants
Dharshan Munidasa, whose eateries Nihonbashi and Ministry of Crab are among Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, on carving his own path and making celebrities into business partners
Tell us about your childhood. “I was born in Tokyo in 1970. My dad had moved from Sri Lanka to Japan and he met my mum, who is Japanese, while he was studying for his doctorate in chemical engineering at the Tokyo University of Technology. We moved to Sri Lanka in 1977. I missed the food, but it was fun because there were things we found in Sri Lanka that weren’t in Japan.
“There was a lot of nature around us – we had huge gardens and wildlife. There were mango trees and banana trees, and fishing was just a bicycle ride away. We’d had nature in Japan, too. The Japanese curiosity about surroundings and nature is ingrained. In the summer, every Japanese kid, no matter how small their house, goes to dig for insects and keeps them for the summer. You will have the life cycle of a frog at some point in your home.”
Did you plan on becoming a restaurateur? “When it came time to study, my dad had suggested moving to the UK, but my impression was that it rained a lot there and the food was bad, so I decided to go to the United States for university, where I studied computer engineering and international relations. The study was one thing but my time there was also the biggest reason I started to cook. The food was really bad, especially the dorm food, so I decided to start cooking myself. I was not eating fancy food; I was eating good food. I used to make my own pickles, the Japanese ones, and even lobster sashimi, sometimes, as a treat. I was cooking Sri Lankan food, too. My roommates were very well fed.
“My father passed away six months before I graduated. That was the reason I moved back to Sri Lanka. I had a job lined up in Tokyo but I returned to settle his affairs and, within one year of returning to Sri Lanka, my mother and I opened our Japanese restaurant, Nihonbashi. That was in 1995. I had talked about doing a restaurant with my dad – a Japanese restaurant – but nothing ever came of it. But being back in Sri Lanka, I wanted to have an office and I thought having a restaurant might cover the cost.
“My mum was involved a lot at the beginning but I was fighting with her over the difference between restaurant food and home-cooked food. I was never professionally trained but I paid attention when eating out and I knew I wanted it to be more of a professional kitchen. My trading business was up and running and although the restaurant did support it in the first year, from 1996 to 2000 it was the other way round. After that, the restaurant started to really grow and now I hardly have time to do anything else.”