It would be absolutely wrong to call chef Masakazu Taira a maverick. After all, he runs one of the most in-demand restaurants in the Greater Tokyo area. And yet, he himself would be the first to agree that his career trajectory has been unorthodox. This is clear from the location of his ever-popular restaurant, Don Bravo.
Taira has worked at some of the most respected kitchens in Italy, including La Tenda Rossa (Florence), Sadler (Milan), and Duomo (Ragusa, Sicily), all with two Michelin stars. But even so, when the time came for him to open a restaurant of his own, he picked a site far from the bright lights and gastronomic power spots of the city center — Kokuryo, a residential district on the outskirts of Chofu, itself a sleepy dormitory town in the metropolitan suburbs.
These days, many customers travel the best part of an hour by local train from central Tokyo for Taira’s multicourse dinners or even for the creative line of pizzas that have formed the centerpiece of lunch at Don Bravo since it opened in 2012. Back then, though, for an ambitious, motivated chef like Taira, it may well have felt like a retreat into obscurity.