[For the chefs, with the chefs ~Memories of Gault et Millau told by top chefs~ vol.1] Chef Seizo Mikuni

The memorable lead-off batter for this series is Chef Seizo Mikuni of “Hôtel de Mikuni.” While also serving as an advisor to the Rugby World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, Chef Mikuni runs the kitchen of his restaurant, which is fully booked day after day. On a spring afternoon with the cherry blossoms in bloom, in between his busy duties, he shared many “legends” with us.

In this first part, we present episodes from Chef Mikuni’s training years.

Gault et Millau Japon editorial team (GM staff): Thank you for giving us your valuable time today amid such a busy schedule. (Looking around the room) What a lovely room this is.

Chef Seizo Mikuni (Chef Mikuni): This room gets the most sunlight in the afternoon and becomes very bright. The painting on the wall is a work by Hisao Domoto. Rather nice, isn’t it? Well then, shall we get right into it?

GM staff: It’s wonderful! So, to get straight to it – today we’d like to hear about your training years in Europe. The episode where, at the age of 20, on the recommendation of head chef Murakami at the Imperial Hotel where you were then working, you became head chef of the Japanese Embassy in Switzerland is famous.

Chef Mikuni: At 18 I started as a part-timer in the dishwashing area, washing pots in the kitchen while waiting for a staff opening. The wait back then was no small thing – there were 52 people ahead of me. But the staff hiring came to an end right at the person just before me.

GM staff: What…?! Right in front of you…?!

Chef Mikuni: I tasted failure for the first time. The summer of my twentieth year. The Imperial Hotel had 18 restaurants then, and after my part-time hours were over, I was allowed to go around the dishwashing areas of all 18 restaurants, washing pots without end. Even so, I was planning to go back to Hokkaido at the new year. When head chef Murakami called me in around October, I naturally assumed I was about to be fired – but it turned out to be about going to Geneva.

GM staff: A major selection indeed. How did you feel at that moment?

Chef Mikuni: The first thing that flashed into my mind was the scenery of Mashike Town – the hometown scenery I had, with some bitterness, been ready to return to. Three seconds later, I had already answered, “Yes, I’ll go.”

GM staff: An instant reply in just three seconds…!! Back then there was no internet or social media, and information about Europe must have been hard to come by – did you have no hesitation?

Chef Mikuni: Of course I knew nothing at all. And yet, when I landed at Geneva airport, the snowy landscape looked just like Mashike Town. That gave me a feeling that it would be all right.

GM staff: The head chef of an embassy is a key position responsible for the meals of top figures from around the world. With limited means of gathering information, how did you go about the work?

Chef Mikuni: One day the ambassador called me in and told me that a week later “we will hold a dinner banquet inviting the American ambassador.” At the time I didn’t really understand what a dinner banquet even was. So I was told about “Lyon d’Or,” a restaurant the American ambassador often went to, and I went and learned the “rabbit in mustard sauce” that the ambassador liked at the time – in secret from everyone. When I served that rabbit dish at the banquet, the ambassador was extremely pleased. That’s how I somehow made it through my very first banquet.

GM staff: After that, you met Chef Frédy Girardet – said to run “the best restaurant in Switzerland” and still boasting an unshakable reputation today. Michelin had not yet arrived back then; what was the catalyst?

Chef Mikuni: While I was being allowed to study at a local restaurant on my one day off per week, I happened to hear rumors of Chef Girardet and became interested. I went straight away, but in an era when foreigners were a rarity, at first I was turned away at the door. Still I persisted, slipped into the dishwashing area, and as I washed pots I was eventually accepted. At the time, Japanese chefs of French cuisine mostly trained at Michelin-starred restaurants such as “Auberge du Père Bise” in Annecy, but I intuitively felt it had to be Chef Girardet. He was called “the Mozart of the kitchen” – the dining room would be fully booked, yet nothing on the menu was decided. There were simply ingredients, and the dishes were born from a state with no recipe at all. The 1970s – that era feels to me like the very dividing line between the classic and the nouvelle in French cuisine.

“I think Michelin evaluates how comfortably and how deliciously the guest can eat, while Gault et Millau evaluates how wonderful the chef is.”

Chef Seizo Mikuni

GM chief: At that dividing line of trends, what role do you think the gourmet guides played?

Chef Mikuni: Michelin has the image of an absolute authority. Against that, Gault et Millau has the image of the innovators who discovered the likes of Mr. Bocuse and Mr. Guérard. It stands at the opposite pole from the conservative – there is a freedom to take on new things. Michelin evaluates in terms of how comfortably and how deliciously the guest can eat, but Gault et Millau, I think, evaluates how wonderful the chef is. Even as the same kind of rating book, the point they focus on is different.

GM chief: That is exactly where the character of Gault et Millau – its very reason for being – seems to lie.

Chef Mikuni: Art is always destined to be given a score and critiqued by critics. To be evaluated, to create a new work, to be evaluated again… every art, I believe, builds its history in that way. Of course, everyone wishes to receive high marks!

In the second part, we will hear about Chef Mikuni’s activities after his return to Japan.

April 5, 2019, at Hôtel de Mikuni

Interview & photography: Gault et Millau Japon editorial team

Cooperation: Société Mikuni Inc.