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?