By Brian Cazeneuve
When Masaki Takahashi was growing up in a village outside of Kyoto, his artistically-inclined parents, Uji and Nobuku, used to encourage him to make toys. It would enhance his discipline and increase his focus, they reasoned. Masaki’s creations were, indeed, focused and very sharp. “I made swords,” he explained, smiling at the memories of the vivid imagination they would compel. “I could go away to some other place as a fantasy.”
Much changed in Takahashi’s life: the venue, the means of creativity, even the country of artistic appliance. Now there is a different type of play, more sophisticated, more experimental, imaginative, but every bit as sharp and focused as the swords he would playfully swing at his brother.
These days, Takahashi is the Executive Pastry Chef at Restaurant Yuu in New York’s trendy neighborhood of Greenpoint in Brooklyn, yet the boy’s trade of choice that would carry him to Tokyo and New York once seemed fanciful. “We did not come from a culture of dinner parties,” Takahashi explains through an interpreter. “It was a mountainous region with not many people. Artists liked the seclusion of it all, deep in the mountains. I had a 40-minute walk to school.”
But the boy read his father’s cookbooks and often experimented with dough and the apples his parents brought home for the winter. When it came time to pick a career, he passed over other creative endeavors such as molding ceramics and making fireworks, and opted to study pastry. “We never ate at expensive places,” he says, “but once I started my study, I became sucked into the culture.”
The true test, he recalls, entailed long hours of baking bread at Tsuji Confectionary College in Osaka. It wasn’t quite his favorite topic, since bread essentially chooses its own progression, but the regimentation disciplined him. And the logic behind bread’s cousin, pastry, fascinated him, even though he realized his desserts of choice contained far less butter and cream than those in front of him.
Since the post-graduation pipeline works differently in Japan than in Europe or North America,
Takahashi found the next course of his career in print. “I opened a guide, and I saw a place with nice photos,” he recalls. I thought oh, the desserts look pretty there.”
Takahashi sheepishly knocked on the door of Maison Tateru Yoshino in Osaka, named for the head chef, and found himself walking into an interrogation. “He got background information about my family. He studied me,” Takahashi recalls. “He was really scary,” When Toshino left on a trip to France soon after, Takahashi was left to handle the desserts by himself. “Are you ready for the test?” Takahashi remembers thinking. “No? Okay, here is your exam.”
The budding chef was an ace, incorporating Japan’s delightful fresh fruits and playing to the seasons in order to optimize ripeness and flavor. He left to join Joel Robuchon in Tokyo, where a team of pastry chefs was tasked with helping maintain the restaurant’s three Michelin stars. Precision? Not a single garnish dared to be out of place. Consistency? From October to February, he worked six 16-hour days each week. That’s 96 hours of exacting detail.
Ingredients make a dessert; the texture and the order of presentation tells a story.
In 2018, he moved to Tokyo’s Narisawa, which earned a Michelin star in no small part thanks to Takahashi’s elegant desserts that would present varied forms of single ingredients, varied by texture and appearance, but all thematic. His creations were light, simple and beautiful. The chef’s mild-mannered demeanor could not prevent others from noticing. Chef Yuu Shimano was an early fan since the day he met Takahashi at a pop-up event in Japan. Yuu had been trained in classic French cuisine and had cooked in several elite restaurants in France, including Guy Savoy, which earned three Michelin stars. Chef Yuu moved to New York and began working at Mifune, but had a dream to open his own restaurant with his own vision. He wanted Chef Masaki to join him. “Masaki is very focused,” Shimano says. “He is always thinking about the right flower, the right fruit. Ingredients make a dessert; the texture and the order of presentation tells a story. His approach was the same as mine.”
Last year, at 34, Takahashi embraced the challenge of moving to New York a location that encouraged him to explore and play, while staying within certain boundaries. “In France, there is a clear understanding of French food and French people,” he explains. “In Japan, it is Japanese people with a certain culture and certain palate. New York is so diverse, you can go to a new country each day. It’s a big salad bowl. As a chef, you have so many options, but you also need to be focused.”
Together, Shimano and Takahashi discussed the restaurant concept. They would not shy from risks, but they would respect ingredients, prioritizing clean, bold flavors over, say, sauces or confections that were fatty and heavy. Even an inherently lush dish such as foie gras would be an eel foie gras touched with daikon and bonito flakes to lighten the dish.
In May, 2023, Restaurant Yuu opened on Shimano’s 41st birthday, presenting a 14-course tasting menu that gained fast acclaim for being a refined French-style restaurant enhanced by Japanese flair and based on the ethos of omotenashi (Japanese for looking after guests), a mindful hospitality that creates and emotional connection based on core principles of empathy, anticipation and authenticity.
The restaurant experience is engaging and well-choreographed theater. In the tall, airy space, guests sit atop 18 stools at the raised table overlooking a kitchen area that is concealed by a black drape when they arrive. Perhaps there is simply nothing to see here. Then the drape opens revealing a cast of chefs standing in front of the kitchen. The dramatic reveal suggests a staging that is part workshop, part laboratory and part magic. Chef Yuu introduces the performance with a brief background about the restaurant and the tasting menu that will follow. Then he alerts his troops with a call to action: “Ikimasho!” (“Let’s go!”) and the cast claps in unison. It is the sort of opening that almost compels the restaurant to deliver something special and memorable to complement the theatrics. And it does. Restaurant Yuu offers a menu that is both visually alluring and tasty. Takahashi’s work is on display in savory dishes as well as the finales, whether he is making tart shells, composing a light flake crust for Yuu’s Duck en Croute (Duck Pie) or a concentrated coulis that enhances a protein.
As a chef, you have so many options, but you also need to be focused.
The desserts are delectable affirmations rather than technical checklists. Takahashi might present three variations of cherry blossoms, two variations of Rose Champagne, maybe limes or matcha – simple, yet condensed in their complexity. And creative. For Christmas, the chef composed a dessert with ingredients that included, well, a Christmas tree. He utilized a chocolate powder, lime sorbet, coconut foam and pine-tree powder. Yes, chestnuts roasting on an open fire would have been too easy.
In the winter, he offered his confections to go, including macarons, stollen, Gallette des Rois and a ten-layer Oshii berry cake that highlighted pistachio.
Chef Masaki finds minimalism attractive, based on pillars of texture, seasonality, temperature. With the seasonal ingredients and skilled textural variety, his ode to simplicity doesn’t quite do justice to the thought and precision that elevates his dishes. A brilliant sunset is simple, too. A perfectly ripe strawberry is luscious because of, not in spite of, its simplicity. “It’s essential to respect the ingredients and let them be the stars,’ Takahashi says reasonably. Yet this approach belies the detailed timeline he wants his confections to take.
“Masaki is always thinking. He is making a story,” Chef Yuu explains. “First bite; second bite, third bite. The tongue and the mouth taste each one differently.” Sure, it’s one thing to assemble great instruments, but how do they work in a concerto performed by an orchestra? There is a developing plotline to Masaki’s desserts that complement the executive chef’s philosophy.
It’s essential to respect the ingredients and let them be the stars.
Shimano explains it this way: “Masaki thinks of how you taste Sakura (cherry blossom) when it sits on the tongue. When he makes a dessert with strawberry and matcha, the arrangement is specific.” That dessert includes a mousse cake sweetened with maple syrup filled with Amaou strawberry, next to adzuki beans, matcha ice cream, thick matcha sauce and Amaou jam and dotted with pistachios. “Matcha is very bitter,” says Shimano. “He’s using gelatin and agar very differently. Gelatin is more airy. Agar brings more flavor. He wants to send a massage, keeping flavor in the mouth, so he uses agar. For the second bite, more airy, he uses gelatin.”
In June, Takahashi hosted a five-course dessert sampling while Shimano was away in Japan. Highlighting the colors of summer, the menu featured dishes that were yellow (grapefruit marinated in grapefruit oil, poached pineapple and aloe with ginger compote) green (melon and mint espuma with matcha icea cream and foam), red (warm nectarine clafoutis with red nectarine sauce), purple (blueberry espuma and cassis sauce in black current meringue, cream cheese ice cream and shiso jelly) and black (three chocolate tartlets with blackberry, black cardamom and black sesame).
The concept excites the conceptual palate. Guests ponder what might be next for a dynamic restaurant that earned its own Michelin honor within a year of opening and may not stop at one star. As it flourishes, the boy with the sword will keep cutting a bold, delicious path.
Photos by Caroline Mays
(This article appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)
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