How This Tempura Restaurant Became the Only One to Land a Michelin Star
By focusing on details, this Hokkaido native moved to New York and made it happen
Kiyoshi Chikano is executive chef of the first and only Michelin-starred tempura restaurant in the U.S., Tempura Matsui. In our interview, I assumed Chikano-san was in his 30s, for he looks quite young and spoke of his former bosses as “oyakata” — a term that’s equivalent to master — but he revealed that he’s actually 49.
His career started in Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture, where he worked at a sushi restaurant until telling his mentor he wanted to work in the city. His mentor advised him to make his way to Tokyo and introduced him to a restaurant called Zakuro, where he got his official start in a professional kitchen. He worked his way up and while he enjoyed Tokyo, it didn’t satisfy him — and from there he set his eyes on NYC.
KO: Why New York City?
KC: It’s hard to explain. It’s always been a thing for me, to want to go to different, more exciting places. I had visited other countries, but the U.S. felt like the place where things happened. And even among cities like Los Angeles or Las Vegas, the most exciting place was NYC — it’s the city of dreams after all, and that left an impression on me.
