Kei Kitagawa works from 10 a.m. to the small hours of the night in a northern Italian restaurant, often not even taking his single day off of the week.
But the long hours have in no way put the 25-year-old off. "I'm happy just to be touching the pasta dough with my hands," he says. "I like everything (about Italian food), including the texture and smell of pasta."
Kitagawa is part of a long line of novice Japanese cooks who have ventured across language and cultural barriers into Italy over the years. Their hope is to get the hang of Italian cooking in its home country and burnish their resume as a path to becoming a chef back in Japan.