Paris’ most unconventional Japanese chef hails from Seiyo, on the Japanese island of Shikoku where, at the age of 15, he dedicated his life to cooking. He decided not to follow the Japanese norm, which would have led him to become a sushi chef, or work at an Izakaya or a Kaiseki (traditional Japanese restaurants serving family-style and fine cuisine, respectively). Instead, he started out by learning the fundamentals of international cuisine.
Starting with the Asian and Western culinary basics - including Japanese cooking, of course - he eventually took part in the preparations of a meal for the Emperor’s son, Mikado. He then worked at a selection of Tokyo’s finer restaurants before moving on to Ginza French restaurant, Le Chaperon Rouge as salad chef, first apprentice, sauce chef, and, finally, chef. His desire to perfect his skills in other fields very quickly led him to study French pastry under Suzuki Kazuya.
Since 1999, he has served as the general manager and chef of Kaiseki, the Japanese restaurant he and his wife built from the ground up in Paris’ 15th arrondissement. Hissa wanted his restaurant to serve as a creative outlet where conventions could be bypassed and experimentation could take place.
More than just a restaurant, Kaiseki is a laboratory where recipes were first developed for take-away sales in bento boxes. However, success led the chef to add a small dining room, where up to 20 guests could enjoy his cuisine while watching the preparations in the open kitchen, separated from the dining room by a counter. It was there that the chef started to adapt traditional Japanese food by reinterpreting sushi as much as reinventing sophisticated Kaiseki cuisine and, in the process, making his name synonymous with Japanese nouvelle cuisine.
