Tomoya Kawada

The Path

Chinese cooking supplied the first professional foundation at Chinese restaurant Abazu Choko, where Tomoya Kawada worked early in his career. The later move to Japanese restaurant Nihonryori Ryugin brought him into a kitchen culture built on discipline, exactness, and careful treatment of domestic ingredients. That training sharpened the Chinese work rather than redirecting it. The passage from Abazu Choko to Nihonryori Ryugin put two systems of attention into contact: Chinese technique and Japanese refinement. In Kawada’s case, the exchange became a way to examine how Japanese attention to season and purity could clarify China’s long culinary history, and how Sichuan cuisine, with its depth, heat, fragrance, and structure, could be expressed with a Japanese sensibility rather than simply reproduced in Japan. The Executive Chef role at Sazenka, held by Tomoya Kawada since 2017, gave that accumulated training a fixed address. In Tokyo, the work is built on balance rather than compromise: Chinese cuisine honored as the base, Japanese cuisine used to shape contour, pacing, and treatment.

The Work Today

Chinese cuisine refracted through Japanese spirit is the working frame at Sazenka, where Tomoya Kawada became Executive Chef in 2017. Tea pairings are part of that frame, built into the meal as a structural element rather than an afterthought. For Kawada, that synthesis has a name. "Wakon kansai means taking the knowledge and techniques of China (Kansai), which has a long, layered history spanning the Qin, Han, and Ming dynasties, and refining them through the lens of Japan’s spiritual essence (Wakon)." The phrase separates the components rather than blending them casually. Kansai carries Chinese knowledge and technique across dynasties; Wakon names the Japanese spiritual essence through which that knowledge is refined. In practice, the kitchen’s task is selection and calibration: what to preserve, what to clarify, and where to give the dish space.

In Their Words “With this challenge ahead of me, I realized that I needed to learn more about Japanese cuisine, if I were to use domestic ingredients.”

Acclaim

Tomoya Kawada has received MICHELIN Guide Tokyo: Three Michelin stars for Sazenka (2021). Recognition for Sazenka records the trade response to this precise China-Japan reading: Ranked No. 12 for Sazenka in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants (2021), Ranked No. 75 for Sazenka in The World's 50 Best Restaurants (2021), Three Michelin stars for Sazenka (2020), Ranked No. 29 for Sazenka in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants (2020), Ranked No. 23 for Sazenka in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants (2019), and Two Michelin stars for Sazenka (2017).