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OUR CHEFS 2016


Motokazu Nakamura

Motokazu Nakamura is the head chef and owner of the Michelin 3-star kaiseki restaurant Nakamura in Kyoto. Motokazu Nakamura has owned the 200-year-old Nakamura restaurant since 2006, having trained at Tenryū -ji, the head temple of the Tenryū branch of Rinzai Zen Buddhism in Kyoto. In that time he has quietly developed an approach to traditional cooking using the highest quality ingredients and with a strong basis on the avoidance of waste that has taken the culinary world by storm.

A former caterer to the emperor, the Nakamura family is now at their 6th generation of chefs, with Chef Motokazu and his wife maintaining the same extraordinary standards that have resonated with the brand over the centuries.

History of restaurant itself starts in 1804, when the founding Nakamura set up a fish shop which supplied tilefish, mackeral, flounder, and so on, that had been brought directly from Wakasa Bay, on the Sea of Japan, to Kyoto, along the famous “Mackeral Highway.” From the time of second generation Nakamura, they honed their cooking skills by preparing meals that were particularly liked by the court nobility. Then the third generation Nakamura expanded the catering business and fourth generation Nakamura opened an inn for visiting important government officials, until finally, they opened up their own Kyoto cuisine restaurant. And so now the sixth generation inheritor of these Nakamura specialties is Motokazu Nakamura, who carries on the tradition with dishes such as shiromiso-ozoni and guji-no-sakeyaki [tilefish grilled with sake].
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