French classical, Japanese finish
Yasuaki Chida
Forty-three years of French classical technique, run by a Tokyo-trained chef with a Japanese sense of finish.
Yasuaki Chida trained at Goto Culinary College in Tokyo, a school whose graduates turn up in Michelin dining rooms, and then spent his career doing the least glamorous and most demanding version of the job: banquets. Cooking well for two people is a craft. Cooking equally well for forty, on time, is a different discipline, and it is the one that shaped him.
What that leaves is a chef with an unusually wide repertoire — French first, but Japanese, Chinese, Cajun and kosher menus all sit inside it — and no interest whatsoever in cutting a corner. Ask him for the trick and he says there isn’t one: buy the best thing available, hold the standard, work hard. Guests who have watched him plate say the same thing in different words, which is that nothing on the night looks improvised.
Look at what he actually sends out and the training shows in the spread of it: pan-seared branzino over black rice, a lobster risotto finished with truffle oil, an Ontario tomahawk carved at the table, a brûlée under matcha, a warm canelé. The vegan card is not the afterthought that phrase normally warns you about: buddha bowls, buckwheat noodles with nori and basil, an avocado chocolate mousse. It is also priced under most of his other menus rather than over them.
| Checked | Trained at Goto Culinary College, Tokyo. Career begun in 1983; four decades of banquet and fine-dining service. Cooks French, Japanese, Chinese, Cajun and kosher menus. |
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| Hired for | Milestone birthdays are his standing work — fortieths, sixtieths, the dinners somebody has been planning for a year — along with bachelorette weekends and family-style brunches for tables of seven and up. |
Two plates from Yasuaki’s own gallery, shot in service.
Straight off the card
Yasuaki’s cards, with the figure already on them
We booked him for a fortieth and got a restaurant evening in our own dining room. He was thoughtful and exact from the first planning message onward, and the attention to detail held right through to the last course.
Femi A. of Toronto, who scored the night 5.0/5