i. Biography
Kotaro Nakajima is the owner and chef of Kutan, a modern kaiseki restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo, which he opened in 2018. Born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1978, he began his career at a local Japanese restaurant at age 19, trained at Matsuhisa in Los Angeles at age 24, spent ten years at the three-Michelin-starred Kanda restaurant under Hiroyuki Kanda, and earned one Michelin star for Kutan in 2019 and two stars in 2021.
