Testo di Melinda Joe
Foto di Luuvu Hoang
It’s Christmastime at Été, Natsuko Shoji’s exclusive, six-seat restaurant in Tokyo. In a glass display case at the back of the dining space, an installation of giant jigsaw puzzle pieces arranged in the outline of a Christmas tree glows brightly, lights transitioning from Yves Klein blue to electric pink and then gold. Delectable aromas of butter and roasted seafood waft from the kitchen as Shoji enters the room carrying a savory puff-pastry pie on an engraved silver platter.
“We’re crazy busy this season,” the 34-year-old chef says with characteristic frankness.
The restaurant is booked solid for lunch and dinner, and her boutique cake shop, Fleurs d’été, is inundated with holiday orders. Despite putting in extra-long hours, Shoji, sporting a navy chef’s jacket over lycra cycling pants paired with brightly colored running shoes, displays no signs of fatigue.
In Japan’s male-dominated restaurant world, Shoji stands out as a leading female chef. Her speech is measured and deliberate, with a soft voice that subtly shifts in pitch when switching between Japanese and English. Her quiet demeanor, however, belies an iron will. Shoji is a serious-minded chef and businesswoman determined to succeed.
“To be honest, I’m not the kind of person who cares about taking time off. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself,” she says, placing a delicate rosette of sliced mango petals, nestled atop a sable-cookie base slathered with custard cream, on the dark marble table in front of me.
The tarte is a nod to the signature mango dessert that catapulted her to stardom nearly a decade ago – a stunning composition of nine mango roses studded with ripe berries and then covered in a fine jelly veil, presented in a bespoke box like an edible Nicolai Bergmann floral arrangement.
“The tarte is part of the story of Été, a ‘return to the origin’ of sorts,” she says, referring to the restaurant’s beginnings as a pastry shop. “I serve it at the end of every meal.”
Though Shoji first gained recognition for her exquisite confections, — each handcrafted from seasonal fruits and inspired by textile patterns from iconic fashion houses such as Chanel — her culinary talent encompasses both sweet and savory delights. Opened in 2014 as a cake specialist in a small apartment space in Tokyo, Été grew into a fully-fledged restaurant the following year, attracting a wave of media attention and guests like René Redzepi and David Beckham. After being named Asia’s Best Pastry Chef in 2020, Shoji went on to claim the title of Asia’s Best Female Chef in 2022.
Now, Été is now one of the most coveted reservations in Tokyo. With only six seats arranged around a single table, the experience feels more akin to visiting a friend’s house than a fine-dining restaurant. Shoji oversees everything herself, from selecting the wine to working with the artists who create the restaurant’s seasonally changing installations. Attention to detail is evident in Shoji’s carefully curated assemblage of curios, the vintage Baccarat butterflies that punctuate the table, and her astonishing, meticulously crafted cuisine.
A native of Tokyo, Shoji developed an eye for beauty at a young age. Her grandfather collected pottery from Arita, a village in Saga Prefecture renowned as the birthplace of Japanese porcelain. As a child, she was fascinated by the complex, hand-painted patterns that adorned the pieces. Her early exposure to the artistry of Arita-yaki porcelain ignited a profound appreciation for traditional crafts and the artisanal spirit, a reverence that continues to inform her work in the kitchen.
“The fineness of the brushwork is something that only Japanese artisans can accomplish,” she says. “The precision and focus required are points of commonality between traditional craftsmen and chefs, and I think of myself and the farmers I work with as artisans.”
She discovered her talent for cooking in middle school, while making cream puffs in home economics class. Shoji appreciated the methodical nature of the baking process and marveled at how simple ingredients could be transformed into delightful creations. “I still remember watching the dough rise and puff up,” she says, recalling the feeling of wonder.
Soon, she began baking cream puffs at home for her friends, who urged her to open a pastry shop in the future. Encouraged by their comments, she enrolled in culinary classes at Komaba Gakuen High School and decided to pursue a career as a chef.
She trained as a pastry chef at Michelin-starred restaurant Le Jeu de l’Assiette before joining the team at Hiroyasu Kawate’s two-starred Florilege. During her three-year tenure there, she ascended to the role of sous chef. However, a poignant turn of events occurred when she was 21: her father, who had been hospitalized, passed away unexpectedly while she was working.
The shock of her father’s death took a mental toll and forced Shoji to step away from the restaurant industry. A year later, a guest from Florilege approached her to create a wedding cake. As she crafted the celebratory dessert, the joy she found in the kitchen and the positive reception it garnered motivated her to return to cooking, ultimately leading to the decision to open her own restaurant. However, her initial attempts to secure a loan were thwarted by obstacles.
“At that time, I was 23 and had no track record. I was told that a woman my age asking to borrow a large sum of money was unthinkable. It was one of the most difficult things I had to deal with,” Shoji recalls. She eventually raised 10 million JPY (around 69,000 USD), but the next hurdle was finding staff. “If I’d been older and already famous, it might not have been an issue, but particularly in Japan, a lot of men have a problem with the idea of working for a younger woman,” she says, noting that the cooks at Été are all female.
Having triumphed over a series of challenges, — which included undergoing surgery for early-stage cervical cancer — the resilient and outspoken chef has gone from strength to strength. In 2019, Été relocated to fancier digs in Yoyogi-Uehara, a mostly residential Tokyo neighborhood filled with artsy shops, stylish eateries and quirky cafes. The buzz surrounding the restaurant led to a string of accolades, followed by exciting new projects and expansion. In 2020, Shoji began collaborating with celebrated artists such as Takeshi Murakami. A year later, she launched Fleurs d’ été, a space specifically focused on cakes, and initiated a new program with Komaba Gakuen High School in 2022 to train young chefs in implementing sustainable practices into their work.
Since the inception of Été, Shoji has evolved as a chef, and her work reflects a deeper exploration of the interplay between cuisine and art. A blooming flower, painstakingly composed of individual pomelo vesicles, accented with radish half-moons and a gold-leaf covered cherry tomato, conceals a layered composition of sea bream tartare flavored with gazpacho. Each citrus-flower takes 20 minutes to assemble. At an event for the Cairo Food Week festival last year, Shoji unveiled a more complex version of the dish: a sunflower made from three types of citrus to create gradations of color with flecks of gold leaf pasted to the vesicles mimic the effect of dappled sunlight.
While she is renowned for her show-stopping presentations, Shoji underscores the significance of the invisible work that goes into crafting exquisite cuisine. Served in a white porcelain dish shaped like a crab shell, orange-and-gold Shanghai hairy crab sauce sprinkled with saffron threads is layered over pan-fried turnips with Shimonita negi (a type of Japanese green onion). Shoji crafted the hairy crab dish not to showcase elaborate presentation but as “an homage to the way chefs, like artisans, use specialized knowledge and tools.”
“If hairy crabs are cooked after they’ve died, they may carry toxins or parasites, but a lot of people don’t know about that,” she explains. “As chefs, we’re dealing with people’s lives, so we can’t offer food to our guests without completely understanding the ingredients.”
One of Shoji’s strengths lies in her ability to integrate ideas from diverse disciplines into her creations. Her lobster pithivier, enveloped in a bronze shellac of mille-feuille puff pastry and paired with a rich citrus-accented sauce, combines her expertise as both a pâtissier and culinary master. Shoji calculates the baking time precisely so that the tail, surrounded by a cloud of lobster mousse, remains succulent and tender-rare, while the pastry crust is light and flaky.
The dish also encapsulates a reflection on the passage of time. The sauce is infused with tangerine peel aged for 20 years, an ingredient that Shoji discovered on a trip to Hong Kong last year.
“I was impressed to learn about Hong Kong’s long history of preservation techniques. I thought the juxtaposition of fresh lobster with 20-year-old tangerine would be interesting,” she says. “It’s like many years converging on the same plate.”
A vintage wine enthusiast, Shoji pairs the pithivier with Jacques Selosse Initial Blanc de Blanc champagne – the perfect match.
Été’s strawberry sorbet, made from scratch as the guests are finishing the main course, displays subtle artistry. White and red varieties of strawberries from Tochigi are used to create a striking swirled pattern. Shoji presents the sorbet atop an arrangement of a strawberry plant encased in acrylic, an artwork by ikebana artisan Makoto Azuma.
“Because cuisine is an artform, this is like layering art on top of art,” she says.
As a fashion icon who has graced the pages of Harper’s and Vogue in Japan, Shoji also leverages her considerable influence to support Japanese craftsmen outside of the restaurant. Collaborating with graphic designer Verdy, the visionary behind the Girls Don’t Cry fashion brand, Shoji launched a line of heart-shaped Arita-yaki porcelain boxes adorned with gold trim. Traveling to Arita to observe the porcelain-making process, she immersed herself in learning the fundamentals of the craft. The meticulous hand application of gold paint by the artisans left a deep impression on her.
“Each piece is so perfect that it looks as though it’s been done by a machine, but the artisans paint them with a fine brush, one by one,” she explains. “It’s incredible.”
However, she worries for the future of traditional crafts like Arita-yaki. These fields face a crisis as skilled artisans, along with those who craft the specialized tools for each discipline, age without successors to carry on their legacies. This looming challenge raises questions about the continuity of these time-honored techniques and the potential loss of invaluable expertise. Shoji hopes that bringing a fresh perspective to create new products with these artisans will spark a renewed appreciation for traditional craftsmanship among a broader audience.
“I’m trying to spread the message to the next generation,” she says. “Japanese artisans aren’t good at self-promotion, so I want to support them in that through more collaborations.”
This sentiment extends to her work mentoring young chefs. Like Japan’s traditional crafts, the restaurant industry suffers from severe labor shortages and a lack of recognition for specialized skills.
“At the high school where I teach, the number of students is now half of what it was at its peak several years ago. Now, young people in Japan don’t want to become chefs or artisans, doctors or lawyers: their number one dream is to become a Youtuber,” Shoji says. “I want more people to recognize and elevate the value of the work of chefs and craftsmen so that the next generation will know how amazing this journey can be.”
