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.