i. Biography
Eiji Taniguchi is the owner and chef of L'évo, an avant-garde restaurant in Toga Village, Toyama Prefecture, Japan, specializing in French-inspired cuisine using local foraged and regional ingredients. Born into a family of chefs in Osaka, he trained in French cuisine in Kobe and under Bernard Loiseau in France before establishing himself in Toyama in 2010, opening his first restaurant that year, earning a Michelin star in 2016, and relocating L'évo to its current mountain location in 2020.