Japan and Luxury Food

Hiroyuki Sakai Biography
	Hiroyuki Sakai is known as 'The Delacroix of French Cuisine' and he is a chef who specializes in French cuisine. Hiroyuki Sakai was born on April 2, 1942 in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. In 1959 at the age of 17, he started working in Osaka at a restaurant in the Shin Osaka Hotel. At 19 he travelled alone to Perth, Australia, to build his skills at the Hotel Oriental. After a year and a half in Australia he returned to Japan, spending three years studying at Ginza Shiki with the late Fujio Shito. Shito was his predecessor as the leader of French cooking in Japan. He later worked as a chef at the restaurants Coco Palms in Aoyama and John Kanaya in Roppongi. He is known for his winning record in the popular Japanese television program Iron Chef where he started in 1994 as "Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai". His stature as the top chef on the show was formalized when he was named the  "King of Iron Chefs' after emerging victorious from the show's grand finale, a tournament involving all the active Iron Chefs. Outside of Iron Chef, Sakai is the owner and head chef of the restaurant La Rochelle, originally in Aoyama but now in Shibuya. The restaurant was named after La Rochelle, a city in France where Sakai had spent some time as an apprentice. Tokyo's restaurants force French chefs to eat humble pie Surprising victory as city's restaurants gain more Michelin stars than Paris  reddit this Justin McCurry in Tokyo The Guardian, Tuesday 20 November 2007 Article history Despite being the first Asian city to be tested for the Michelin guide, Tokyo was awarded a record 191 stars. Photograph: Alamy Michelin, the keeper of the world's culinary standards for more than a century, yesterday confirmed what the residents of Tokyo have long believed - that when it comes to fine dining, their city is more than a match for Paris, London or New York. Chefs in the French capital must have been spluttering into their bouillabaisses after Michelin's notoriously demanding reviewers awarded more stars to restaurants in Tokyo than to those in any other city in the world. Eight Tokyo restaurants received the coveted three stars, compared with New York's three and London's one. Proud Parisians, though, can still eat safe in the knowledge that their city has two more three-star restaurants than Tokyo. Five undercover reviewers - three French and two Japanese - spent a year and a half visiting 1,500 of Tokyo's estimated 160,000 restaurants, sampling western and Japanese cuisine. Aside from the three-star ratings, they awarded two stars to 25 restaurants and one star to 117 others. Paris, by comparison, has a total of 98 stars. London has 50, including the Gordon Ramsay restaurant, which has three and New York has 49 stars. Yesterday's announcement seems certain to provoke debate in chef's kitchens around the world. Renewed interest in Tokyo's myriad gastronomic possibilities is expected when the guide goes on sale today. Michelin guide officials said they had long been aware of Tokyo's quiet rise as a global culinary power. "We were surprised there were actually so many restaurants, though not by the quality," Jean-Luc Naret, director of Michelin Guides, told reporters at a packed press conference. The guide to Tokyo - the first Asian city deemed worthy of Michelin's attention - awarded a record 191 stars to the 150 restaurants listed. The news earlier this year that Michelin was to publish a guide to Tokyo was greeted with scorn from some Japanese chefs who reckoned that the critics, despite including two compatriots, were not qualified to comment on the finer points of sushi, sashimi or a multiple-course kaiseki meal. Naret said the results had proved the doubters wrong, noting that almost two-thirds of the starred restaurants serve Japanese food. He said the city deserved praise for "the incomparable quality of the products and cooking techniques used, and the culinary traditions handed down from generation to generation, and which continue to develop, thanks to the talent of its chefs." Hiroyuki Kanda, whose sushi restaurant joined the exclusive club of three-star establishments, threw his arms in the air and let out a celebratory "banzai!" when the results were announced. "I'm very happy," said Kanda, who once ran a Japanese restaurant in Paris. "We were able to show that Japanese dishes hold their own against top-class dishes around the world." Other top-rated restaurants include Sukiyabashi Jiro, where the chef's recommended courses start at 23,000 yen (£100), and Hamadaya, a Japanese restaurant specialising in seasonal dishes, where geisha have been entertaining diners for 90 years. Tokyo's 3-star eats Sukiyabashi Jiro, sushi Sushi Mizutani, sushi Hamadaya, classic Japanese Joel Robuchon, French Kanda, Japanese Koju, Japanese L'Osier, French Quintessence, French Tokyo: the new foodie capital of the world  reddit this Nicola Iseard The Observer, Sunday 23 November 2008 Article history It's official: Tokyo is the world's culinary capital. For more than a century, Paris has had more restaurants with three Michelin stars than any other city, but the new Tokyo 2009 guide has equalled the score. Combined with the fact that Tokyo has more stars in total than any other city, it can finally declare itself the leader. The guide is only the second ever edition for the Japanese city; the first edition, published last year, stunned the world, as Toyko was awarded 191 stars, an astonishing result compared with the 97 stars that Paris scooped. However, Paris still insisted it had the edge, with nine three-starred restaurants compared with Toyko's eight. But now Tokyo has taken the top spot thanks to Ishikawa, a restaurant in the Shinjuku area, specialising in labour-intensive, seasonal Japanese food, which has just been upgraded from two stars to the prestigious three-star club. 'Japanese cuisine is dynamic, diverse and interesting,' says Michelin director Jean-Luc Naret. 'It is worth the travel.' And it is those words, 'worth the travel', that are behind the esteemed triple-star status - indicating 'meals worth a trip', while two mean 'meals worth a detour' and one star promises an 'excellent meal'. But, while Tokyo continues to boast the highest number of total stars in the world, the French argue it has an unfair advantage because it has a staggering 160,000 restaurants in all, while Paris only has 15,000. Tokyoites and Parisians will be on the edge of their seats waiting for the 2009 guide to Paris, published in March, which may return the city to the top spot.  larger | smaller Travel Restaurants · Tokyo · Japan Life and style Food & drink · Restaurants World news Japan · France · Europe · Asia Pacific Related 20 Nov 2007 Tokyo all-stars 21 Nov 2007 Land of the rising stars 27 Nov 2008 Tokyo's theme restaurants 23 Nov 2008 Tokyo: the new foodie capital of the world