French-born chef Guillaume Bracaval has an extraordinary knack for turning lemons into lemonade.
When he arrived in Tokyo on a working holiday visa in 2011 — a mere two months after the triple disaster of the Great East Japan Earthquake — the country was in turmoil. The hospitality industry was devastated, tourism had bottomed out and bankruptcies were rife.
Having left his position as head chef at Michelin-starred L'Agape in Paris, he set about starting a new life in Japan, despite the circumstances. Luck smiled on him when an encounter with legendary chef Michel Troisgros, who was in Japan at the time, led to a job offer. It just so happened that Troisgros was looking for someone to run Cuisine(s) Michel Troisgros, his two-Michelin-starred outpost in Tokyo. Bracaval leapt at the chance, and took over as executive chef in 2012 until the restaurant shut its doors permanently in December of last year.