‘I want to be seen as more than a chef’: Shun Sato on his culinary journey from Sendai, Japan to SoHo, Hong Kong via Australia
- Shun Sato worked in his father’s pub as a boy in Sendai, Japan, and grew up eating so much sashimi, it put him off working in a Japanese restaurant for a while
- He worked in a French restaurant in Tokyo, Japanese restaurants in Australia, then moved to Hong Kong and opened Censu, and a joint operation, Enishi
Growing up surrounded by food, Shun Sato seemed destined to become a chef.
His father owned an izakaya (pub) in the northeastern Japanese city of Sendai. Local workers and businessmen would come for simple fare such as fried or grilled meat and seafood to wash down with beer or sake, and Sato would sometimes help serve customers or do the dishes.
But, if anything, it put him off following in his father’s footsteps.
“I grew up eating a lot of sashimi,” says Sato. “We would eat it all the time. My dad would bring sashimi home to eat. I got so sick of it, I couldn’t stand it any more.” The last thing he wanted to do was work in a Japanese restaurant.
And yet, the idea of being a chef appealed to him, so at the age of 18, he moved to Tokyo and worked in a French restaurant, determined not to be like his dad.
Fate intervened however, and a year later, he found himself in Sydney, Australia, working at acclaimed restaurant Yoshii’s Omakase, known for serving some of the best sushi and sashimi in town.
