It was only after lunch was fully served and I was sipping on my digestif that I noticed the name on the painting hanging on the wall beside me: Yoshimoto. The watercolor next to it, a neat recreation of Le Mont Saint-Michel, bore the same signature.
Then, as if on cue, chef Tatsuhiro Yoshimoto appeared from the kitchen in his chef's whites. The paintings were indeed by his hand, but being modest and personable, he deftly steered the conversation elsewhere.
Before striking out on his own more than 10 years ago, Yoshimoto put in his time at the ANA Crowne Plaza in Osaka, then at La Cloche, an upmarket French restaurant in the swanky neighborhood of Kitahama, before moving north across the Yodo River and setting up Bistro de Yoshimoto in Nakatsu, a hectic "anything goes" kind of neighborhood on the doorstep of Umeda.