American restaurateur Charles Roche, 62, credits his love of feting others to having grown up in the warm and noisy embrace of an extended Italian-American family in the Bronx. As part of a food-loving clan he jokingly refers to as "the Sopranos without the crime," he remembers splitting chestnuts and grating cheese in the kitchen while his Aunt Tess prepared homemade pasta for 50.

"The rule was three days of shopping, two days of cooking for major occasions. I never studied cooking formally, but it was always around me, so I intuitively picked it up," he said.

That background has stood him in good stead as the owner of Papa Jon's, a chain of three cafe-restaurants in Kyoto specializing in New York-style cheesecake and other American desserts and dishes.