Kaiseki, the multicourse meal that is the height of refinement in Japanese cuisine, occupying a similar place to haute cuisine in French cooking, is the modus operandi of chef Hitoshi Miyazawa. As head chef of Ishizuka, a kaiseki restaurant in Melbourne, he tries to stay true to traditional Japanese cooking precepts while also catering to Australian sensibilities.
Growing up in the suburbs between Narita airport and Tokyo to parents who worked in the local government may seem like a surprising background for an international career in Japanese cooking. But Miyazawa's interest in cooking began from an early age. It was watching episodes of the "Iron Chef" TV show as an elementary student in Inzai, Chiba Prefecture, that sparked his love of food.
"As a child, I was really intrigued by the knives used by the chefs on TV. That led me to want to study food, even though my family had no connection to cooking professionally. So, I went to a culinary high school where I could get a food preparation license," he says, adding that originally he planned to study Western cooking.