Interview of Taipei Logy Chef Tahara (1)

Marking one year since becoming a chef, we’ll ask Chef Tahara about his career from his time in Italy until now.

Text and pictures: SAJI Editorial staff
English Translation: Pearl Alexander
→日本語版はこちら

What makes me, me, right now

SAJI: Chef Tahara, thank you very much for your time today. We know that you originally worked in Italian food, then worked as a sous-chef at Florilege, and now you are the chef here at Logy. Could we ask you how working at each location was?

Tahara: Sure, I worked at an Italian restaurant in Hokkaido, after that I went to Italy. I experienced many things working there, and I was fortunate to work with really great chefs and sous-chefs at that time. They told me, since you’re likely planning to return to Japan to become a sous-chef, let’s focus on learning here what you need to use at that future job. So I watched them work and got a very clear impression of a sous-chef’s job. Of course it was Europe’s way of working, but there were many things I was able to take away from that to use in Japan. However I didn’t start at Florilege with the intention of becoming a sous-chef. It just so happened that the sous-chef at that time quit after about half a year and Chef Kawate suggested the job to me so I thought, ok, I’ll do it. But it was that experience in Italy that prepared me for that moment. Then I worked there for 3 years, and I was able to see how Chef Kawate works, as well as how he views customers, food, and the culinary world. I passed that step, and then I became the chef here at Logy.

SAJI: Could we ask you what is your impression of a sous-chef’s role?

Tahara: I think it is important to share the chef’s goal. No matter what happens, achieving that goal is most important. If people can share the chef’s goal; one person is good, two people is better, if it’s everyone it’s the best you know? But that’s actually pretty difficult to do. For example, if some younger staff are focusing only on getting a star or two stars, it can be hard to achieve that kind of unity. Everyone has different experience as well. The places people have worked before, or whether they could understand the value of certain experiences for example. But I wanted to aim for the same goal as him (Chef Kawate) plus add something better. So I made checking the staff and food the center of my focus. Of course for Chef Kawate the food is the most important, so I made sure that we as staff created exactly the same food in the same manner as he wanted. Chef wants to make a dish in this way, so let’s do it that way. He thinks this is important, so let’s make sure we make this important too, this kind of thing. For example, Chef Kawate considers serving a hot dish at the correct temperature to be of upmost importance, something I experienced as well in Italy, that dishes like pasta cool down quickly so it’s very important to serve the dish at the right temperature. It seems more convenient to just serve it one or two minutes early when you’re in a hurry, but I made sure to carefully teach them to serve it at the correct temperature.

SAJI: Could you elaborate a bit on what Chef Kawate, and staff including you, were aiming for at the restaurant?

Tahara: Actually I interviewed with Florilege prior to the move to the new place… You know I didn’t want to be the guy who my friends back in Italy would be like, “I don’t know where he’s at now.” I wanted to be the guy they could talk about and say , “Oh yeah he’s at this place. You know he used to work here.” I felt the same when I worked at the restaurant in Hokkaido as when I worked at Florilege.
If you’re a chef, everyone out there wants to get recognition from abroad, to get on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list and wants to get a Michelin star, and I went to interviews with this in mind. Kawate Chef said to me, “I’m not creating the next restaurant to get one star. We will enter Asia 50 Best. And we will definitely get two stars.” and I thought, it’s this place or nothing for me.

He was set on getting it, and I was too; and I said this everyday to the staff. People who worked with me at Florilege at the same time would probably know what I’m talking about, but I said it to them tens of thousands of times. Of course it’s possible that even if we were recognized by the media, the world might not recognize us. So we made sure to work in a way that people could say “If Florilege became the representative of French food in Tokyo it wouldn’t be embarrassing” because people’s eyes were on us.

SAJI: When you say eyes were on you, are you referring to the U-shaped counter at the restaurant?

Tahara: Yes. Because you could even say what we wanted to convey wasn’t just the food. It’s the way we work or stand at the kitchen. How you hold a spoon, your hairstyle, clothing, everything. I told them every day that we needed to convey that we were top class, in a kind of a crass way.

SAJI: It’s good I wasn’t there.

Tahara: (laughs) Also I’d say, don’t get too excited, don’t let it get to your head. The restaurant is run by Chef Kawate after all, so we don’t necessarily have a say. We wanted to be told, “Only you can do it” not “Someone else could do it better” and worked like this everyday.

SAJI: Sounds like you made sure to be thorough with your work. It’s hard to hear that kind of thing, or to be the person to say it.

Tahara: But it could just be what I say to myself. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who rides on someone else’s fame. I was really frustrated at the Asian 50 Best ceremony.

SAJI: Really, I see.

Tahara: I was happy because we were there as a team though. But I felt like I wasn’t there being the best representation of myself and that was frustrating. Recoiling from that kind of fueled the passion I have right now. I was happy but, I just kept thinking, could I make a restaurant like this myself? When I thought about it in that way, I really had respect for Chef Kawate, and I kept thinking about what I would have had to do to have come this far. And just as I began to understand this, we started talking about Logy, and if I went to Taiwan I thought I for sure want to get a Michelin star.

 SAJI: You were very straight-forward about it.

Tahara: But I don’t have the confidence to get two stars; I’m always thinking a lot about what is right for me, is this ok for the restaurant, this kind of thing. When I worked under Chef Kawate, for example if there was an event we got invited to and he needed to decide whether or not to participate, I used to think about what I would do if I were him. And then after the decision had been made, I would go to him and ask why he made the decision he did. I thought it would help me if I knew the reason. At interviews as well, I would listen to what Chef Kawate was talking about and his way of thinking and compare it to my own way of thinking. If something was similar, I felt fortunate that we had some opinions in common, if his thinking was something I had never considered, I would acknowledge it and think it over again.

 SAJI: I understand that Chef Kawate is your senior and you have a lot of respect for him, so you would be happy if your way of thinking was similar. I’m interested in how the work you did at Florilege will connect to your own unique way of doing things from here onward.

Tahara: Well, since this restaurant opened, Chef Kawate… probably there were a lot of constraints I was tied to and he didn’t say what he thought very much. For example how we would go about creating the restaurant. But I was always told to do what works for me. He said to me, “You can build connections with people I’m not connected to, and you don’t have to get to know the people I’m connected with. You should build your own network, get promotions, do things as you like.” So for example if I wanted to get in touch with one of Chef Kawate’s contacts directly I would usually ask him, but he said “Just go ahead and do everything yourself.” If I’m going to try to contact someone I would have a hard time getting in touch with anyway, I ought to do it on my own. This is just a side note, but Chef Kawate sent emails directly to Michelin himself. He told them, “Please come visit us”.

SAJI: Really?

Tahara: At the old restaurant apparently he found an email address in a book and contacted them saying, “This is Florilege. Please come visit us when you have a chance.” “Just go ahead and send it!” he told me. “I sent it too!” I haven’t sent anything yet but,….. I thought man this guy is something, when I heard that the first time (laughs).

SAJI: (laughs) Yes, that is something. Maybe there really isn’t virtue in waiting.

Tahara: Yes, you have to go and get it yourself. I learned a lot of things there, not only about food.

SAJI: And so it was like that that Logy began right?

Tahara: Yes. I think that they are letting me run the place how I want to, but I really feel that most of what became “me” was formed from my work at Florilege. Of course I have experience from before that, but the place where my way of thinking solidified was at Florilege. I was able to meet many different chefs as well as chefs from abroad I normally couldn’t have met. From a perspective of experience, the person I became is a result of the many things I was made to think about while at Florilege.

(Pic)  At a collaboration event / From the top Hertog Jan, Janice Wong

Originally coming from working in Italian for a long time, then switching to French when working at Florilege, something I’ve always said to myself…it’s a kind of habit I guess. “Is this really good enough as it is? What’s next after this?,” I always think to myself. When I went to Italy, I was only thinking about going to Italy, I wasn’t thinking at all about what I would do after that. There was kind of talk from the people around me like, after he comes back to Japan he’s going to become a chef, but that thought wasn’t really occurring to me. I went to Italy, then I somehow learned how to cook there, and the Italians praised my cooking. People didn’t get it; for example if you bring back only three years’ work of recipes back to Japan, you’ve only got enough for three years tops. A restaurant is going to go on for 20 years or more. That’s not going to work. I thought, there’s no way I can compete with technique and knowledge, I’m done for.

SAJI: Previously, I heard that you weren’t thinking about continuing to cook Italian food in Japan. I remember you said you liked the flavor of everyday food in Italy.

Tahara: Yes, that’s right. Also when I ate at restaurants in France I thought, something about this is different from Italian… I thought the same when I was at Astrance.

SAJI: What do you remember the most about Astrance?

Tahara: It was similar to being at Florilege. This was before I had started really working so that’s not really related, but there were many different flavors of cuisine. Japanese style, or South East Asian style. Of course there’s French taste and also different beautiful flavors. Pascal Barbot has travelled the world so of course he knows so many dishes from different places. You can taste this reflected in the food but at the end of the day, it always came down to French cuisine. At a surprising level. I could tell this when I ate there; he is amazing, creating this kind of food. Tomatoes, clams for vongole, using ingredients that are essential for Italian food to make Italian is of course obvious. French cuisine is supposed to have a specific form and he would use completely different ingredients to create French. I wondered, could I do that with Italian? But, I really couldn’t I think. So I kind of thought “No way, French food, No way I can do that…” (laughs).

SAJI: It sounds like it was a special experience.

Tahara: Yes, although I’ve avoided it.

SAJI: Why is that?

Tahara: I think people who like Italian food tend to think Italy is the greatest, and in that way I avoided it. I preferred to focus on Italian food that’s delicious because ingredients are used in a simple way.

SAJI: Do you mean you didn’t want to add too much information about the flavors or the food?

Tahara: I thought that it was better to show Italian food in this way, so I tended to eschew complicated dishes. “Oh, there’s too much going on in this dish”, or “The flavoring is too strong, I can’t taste the turnip”.

SAJI: Sounds a bit like an aversion to French cuisine.

Tahara: (laughs) Yeah. I tend to end up like that, when I cook Italian. But I kind of don’t like that about myself.

SAJI: You just kind of end up there somehow?

Tahara: Umm, that’s just how I am. But if I stay there I don’t expand my possibilities much, as a chef. My level of freedom is low. So…I began to experience that kind of freedom, when I went to Astrance. For a Michelin three star the atmosphere is a bit casual. Of course the sommelier has a suit on and looks very proper. But it’s very comfortable, overall the interior has a sense of freedom, yet is very clean, and clearly suggests French cuisine. Basically for me it had a huge impact, it shocked me. It was then that I decided to return home to Japan. I had considered making my home in Italy, but on that 3 days 4 nights trip, I decided to return home. It took about a year after that to fulfill the duties I had promised my employer, but after that was finished I immediately returned to Japan.

SAJI: Astrance sounds amazing.

Tahara: It is amazing, France. It can completely change the life of a chef. In one meal. That’s what a restaurant is.

SAJI: And then you decided on Florilege.

Tahara: Yes. As I said earlier, I wanted to go to a restaurant that had plans to expand from Tokyo to the world…I had an acquaintance in Italy who was a chef from Tokyo. I asked him, “What is the most popular restaurant in Tokyo?” and he said “These are doing well” and suggested several places to me. I didn’t know much about French restaurants, but when I checked his suggestions online, I thought, it’s Florilege or nothing for me. I definitely want to work here.

SAJI: By the way, if you were going to go into French cuisine, why did you choose to return to Japan?

Tahara: I didn’t want to learn it overseas. But I also didn’t like starting from zero in Tokyo either. I already had 12,13 years experience cooking. But since I was entering classic French completely from zero, I decided to go the innovative route. I had already cultivated experience, so I thought they might be able to use me somehow. The timing was good. When I told Chef Kawate I come from Italian he said “Oh! that’s great”, as well. Going to France (Astrance), I didn’t have the idea to start learning French from zero, but it was like, “Ah, this kind of French cuisine exists too.” They have a strong level of freedom, they’re very known, and it’s clear what they want to do as a restaurant.

 SAJI: So you worked at the restaurant for about three years, and while you were there, although it was an innovative style, was there something you learned from cooking French cuisine?

Tahara: The way of thinking like a French chef. Until then I had never worked with a French chef before, so it was all completely new. It’s innovative, but it’s still a restaurant created by a French chef. It was a lot of fun.

SAJI: Because it was all completely new?

Tahara: Yes. Also because the way of thinking is completely different.

SAJI: In what way for example?

Tahara: Well, the complexity, the way of layering. It was like, “Wait, it’s really ok to do that!?”

SAJI: (laughs) Ah, there are some things you can do which are not allowed in Italian food aren’t there.

Tahara: I’d say “You can do that? I want to try it too!” (laughs). Even more-so than studying French cuisine, I had absolutely no idea I would make food adopting the way of thinking of a French chef. …It’s not about style or basic recipes. I studied the way of thinking more than recipes.

So of course I made sauces, fond (stock), and jus, and someone with a long experience making French cuisine is going to make something that tastes amazing. But each restaurant has different recipes right? They have their preferred way of making sauces. There are restaurants that don’t put vegetable in the fond, and they are are still admittedly French. So for me the biggest thing was being able to experience something so different, in this case the French philosophy about cooking, rather than just how to make fond or jus. I can’t make that kind of food, but I can add something new to my existing experience, challenge things I didn’t know I was allowed to do, and it gave me a chance to take a step forward.

SAJI: “I can’t make that kind of food” refers to…?

Tahara: I just don’t have the experience. I can’t compare myself to someone who has made French cuisine their whole life, and because I have experience in Italian, it’s an opportunity to make something unique. Even if I stick my neck out to update my skills, it’s rude to someone who’s been building up that experience over time, and I don’t want to be like that. I chose to study what I could and create what I could within the range I have. You can’t produce something outside of your skills or experience after all. You just wind up making something you didn’t really understand in the first place.

SAJI: You wanted to absorb something you needed, you could say.

→Continued in “Don’t rely on the power of the ingredients”

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