Why do chefs at top restaurants do what they do?

Fire | Video lessons for professional chefs, from the kitchens of top restaurants

Fire is an online video course for professional chefs. Chefs at top restaurants, including two-Michelin-star kitchens, explain in their own kitchens why they make each decision. It isn’t recipes or step-by-step technique. It’s the judgment behind them: which ingredients to use and which to refuse, how a dish is built, how a team is run. Fire is run by Fire Inc. in Osaka, Japan, and costs $70 a month.

What is Fire? (FAQ)

Participating restaurants

MAZ

Kioicho, Tokyo | 2 Michelin stars

Why no wasabi and no soy sauce, in Tokyo

The only sister restaurant of Lima’s Central outside Peru. In a kitchen that earned two Michelin stars within eighteen months of opening, the chef explains what he chooses to use, and what he refuses to.

Taught by: Santiago Fernández (Former chef)

“Nothing like this has existed before, and I found it genuinely exciting. For cooks, this is a project that really means something.”

Questions this series answers

  1. How a restaurant conveys its world: Nine in ten ingredients are Japanese, yet a MAZ plate is unmistakably MAZ. Where, beyond the food itself, does the restaurant convey its world? He walks through the choices on the table, down to the tableware and the cutlery rests.
  2. How to build a restaurant’s identity: Shiso, wasabi, myoga. Excellent ingredients, easy to get, and MAZ won’t use them. What decides “we don’t do that here,” and how is that line checked every single day?
  3. Where creativity comes from: “If it’s been done somewhere before, we don’t do it.” So how do new dishes keep coming? He shows the process behind a drink whose flavor changes as you drink it.
  4. Operations that protect quality: During service, the chef spends most of his time on something other than cooking. On a fully booked night, what does a kitchen decide before service so that no plate goes out below temperature?
  5. Getting a dish to the guest exactly as intended: Even the placement of five capers is fixed, and plates are corrected with tweezers after they reach the table. In the seconds after a dish leaves the kitchen, what keeps it from falling apart?
  6. What top restaurants really ask of you: In a two-star kitchen, the chef and the sous chef wash their own tools like everyone else. What separates the cooks who get noticed from the rest shows in how they act the moment a mistake happens.
  7. Leadership in a restaurant kitchen: A chef who says “I’m not a born leader” runs a two-star kitchen. If the team runs without constant instruction, what has he decided, and what has he handed over?
  8. How to keep improving the same dish: When, and how far, can you change a signature dish? Through an octopus dish served for years, he shows what he watches before deciding the next move.
  9. What makes a great chef: A starred chef says, “Chase stars and rankings and you’ll get lost.” Then by what measure does a two-star chef decide what his food should be?

Respiración

Kanazawa | 2 Michelin stars (Michelin Green Star)

From field to plate, every call is theirs

Three childhood friends run this restaurant in a townhouse more than 150 years old, with produce from their own farm served on Suzu and Kutani ware. They talk through every decision, from the field to the plate.

Taught by: Tatsuro Ume (Owner-chef)

“We talked about how we think and how we create our food today: what matters more than technique, and what young cooks should be doing. It’s an effort to capture on film the thinking and instinct beneath the technique, and pass it on to the next generation of cooks.”

Questions this series answers

  1. How to make a dish better: One dish has kept the same look for nine years while everything inside it kept changing. Before deciding to cut the salt by 0.05%, what does the chef look at, and what is he weighing?
  2. How to build a new dish: “Zucchini is at its best simply salted and grilled.” What does a chef who says that decide first when he creates something new? He builds a dish from scratch to show the process.
  3. Deciding when the flavor is right: A new dessert, served with confidence, didn’t land with guests. How did the chef track down the cause? A story about how your standard for “this is right” changes.
  4. Ten years of training: why some grow and others stall: “You can only build your library of aromas until your thirties.” Two cooks can spend the same ten years and end up in very different places. The chef explains the difference, including his own regrets.
  5. How to protect ingredient quality: The amaebi is vacuum-packed at 94%, and 96% won’t do. What can 2% change? Every storage decision, from purchase to the guest’s first bite, shown step by step.
  6. Preparation that starts before the kitchen: “When a guest says it’s delicious, there’s more than a week of preparation behind it.” That preparation starts before the ingredient ever reaches the kitchen. Between harvest and cooking, what does a two-star kitchen watch for?
  7. How to grow a team that moves on its own: “Treat it like your own restaurant.” How many cooks who’ve heard that ever truly felt it? The staff themselves explain how people who act without waiting for instructions grow in a two-star kitchen.

Central

Lima, Peru | World's 50 Best No.1 (2023)

Every altitude’s ecosystem, on one plate

Lima, Peru. A kitchen that turns ecosystems into food, from the sea to the high Andes, altitude by altitude. Researching ingredients with Mater Iniciativa, Central was named No.1 at The World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2023. MAZ in Tokyo is its only sister restaurant outside Peru.

Taught by: Virgilio Martínez (Chef)

“The most important thing is to know the why. Why you’re doing it, why you’re cooking. That’s what I talk about.”

Questions this series answers

  1. The thinking that defines Central’s food: How does the world’s best restaurant serve the same “Central food” in another country, with different ingredients? Even a dish they planned won’t go out if humidity keeps it from being 100%. That judgment reveals the thinking behind everything they cook.
  2. How to build a team that delivers anywhere: Does the food change on the days the chef isn’t there? Why can the world’s best restaurant keep delivering far from home? He explains what he gives his team, and what he trusts them with.

Hanagaki

Nara | 2 Michelin stars (12 years running)

Even first-grade wild kombu isn’t enough

Self-taught over thirty years, he runs the kitchen on his own. Dashi, sourcing, tableware: when an ingredient falls short of the ideal, what does he choose, and what does he let go? He walks through it in the order he decides.

Taught by: Toshihiko Furuta (Owner-chef)

“This service gets to the heart of things. But I think most people will take a while to understand how important it is.”

Questions this series answers

  1. How to make dashi: Even with four kinds of top-grade kombu and four of katsuobushi, he makes a dashi he’s truly satisfied with only a few times a year. Where does the difference come from? He shows the true source of dashi, which is neither the kombu nor the katsuobushi, and how he makes it.
  2. How to choose tableware: Do you choose the vessel to suit the food, or does the vessel come first? An owner-chef who is also an antiques dealer explains, with pieces by Rosanjin in front of him, what he looks for in a vessel and how he pairs it with food.
  3. How to judge a “good” ingredient: “This has no flavor,” someone says, but no one ever teaches you what to look for. At the moment of buying, what does a two-star owner-chef look at, and what does he ignore?

Pricing

Fire Membership: $70 (/ month)

  • Lessons from every participating restaurant
  • Restaurant news from around the world (Daily)
  • Members’ community and events

One restaurant: $55 (One-time purchase · yours to keep)

Pick MAZ or Respiración

Why Fire exists

Recipes are everywhere now, in books and on social media.
But why pull it off the heat at that exact moment? Why decide never to use that ingredient?
The judgment behind the food at top restaurants has only ever reached the few cooks standing next to the chef.

Working in a three-Michelin-star kitchen, our founder came to see that a cook’s training is made of two kinds of time.

  • Time spent learning with your hands
  • Time spent watching and stealing

Cooks take years to develop because the second kind, learning only by watching because no one explains, goes on far too long.

Fire cuts out that second kind of time.
In the kitchens of top restaurants, we ask the chef to stop mid-task and explain why.
We connect how it’s done with why it’s done.
And at the end, we leave you with one question to test in your own kitchen.

Putting it into practice is up to you. There’s no shortcut for that part.

FAQ

Are the lessons in English?

Lessons from MAZ (Tokyo) and Central (Lima) are taught in English. Lessons from Hanagaki (Nara) and Respiración (Kanazawa) are in Japanese, and their English version hasn’t been released yet. The members’ community and the daily news are currently in Japanese.

Is there a free trial?

No. You can watch part of a lesson on each restaurant’s page.

Where do I watch?

On your phone or your computer. Once your payment is complete, we’ll show you how to start watching.

How do I join?

Fill in your name and email, then pay. You can start watching the moment your payment is complete.

I bought one restaurant’s lessons. Can I switch to the membership?

Yes. Join within 30 days of your purchase and we’ll take the $55 off your first month, so it’s $15. After that it’s $70 a month. We’ll email you the link after your purchase. You keep the lessons you bought either way.

How do I cancel?

You can cancel anytime from the members’ page. Your access continues until the next renewal date.

Company

Company
Fire Inc.
Founded
September 16, 2025
CEO
Etsu Kurokawa: Spent four years in the kitchen and the dining room at HAJIME, a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Osaka, then worked in restaurants in New York. Founded Fire in 2025.
Address
12-12 Osaka Ekimae 2nd Bldg,
1-2-2 Umeda, Kita-ku, Osaka 530-0001, Japan

kurokawa@fire-inc.com | Instagram | YouTube