Toru Okuda

Coming Up

Early in the record, Toru Okuda worked as chef at Okuda New York in Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA (2017). The assignment fits a practice built on kaiseki discipline: sequence matters, seasonal timing matters, and restraint is part of the method. Across later roles as owner chef of Ginza Kojyu, Ginza Okuda, and Restaurant Okuda, the throughline is authorship held to a fixed standard, not decoration.

Where They Are Now

Today, Okuda remains owner chef of Ginza Kojyu in Tokyo, the role that has defined his public work since 2003. His specialty is kaiseki, and his own language puts the emphasis on service, continuity, and transmission: "My mission is to bring happiness to people through cooking and to pass on the culture of Japanese cuisine to the future." The point is not performance but succession, with cuisine treated as something kept exact and handed on. His comments on ANAORI kakugama make the same case from another angle. "When using ANAORI kakugama I realized that so far I had been putting a lot of stress on the ingredients." That shift in phrasing matters: the craft is measured by how little distortion it imposes, and by whether ingredients arrive with their character still legible. Upon turning 50, he imposed many self-imposed restrictions: “Never serve the same menu twice,” “Never use familiar tableware,” and so on. Those rules are not an aesthetic flourish so much as a working discipline, keeping repetition from flattening the room and forcing each meal to be composed on its own terms.

Signature

Toru's signature dishes include slow-grilled lobster encased in sea urchin, mature wild eel, kuromutsu, Yaku, and Hontou ni Oishiku Tsukureru Washiyoku. Read together, they point to a kitchen working in depth rather than display: richness handled with control, seasonal ingredients given room, and finish treated as a matter of exacting preparation.

In Their Words “My mission is to bring happiness to people through cooking and to pass on the culture of Japanese cuisine to the future.” “When using ANAORI kakugama I realized that so far I had been putting a lot of stress on the ingredients.”

Honors

For Tokyo work in the Michelin Guide era, recognition arrived early. Ginza Kojyu earned three Michelin stars in 2007, and that result sat squarely on the restaurant where Okuda had already been owner chef since 2003. Ginza Okuda earned two Michelin stars in 2011, four years after he became owner chef there. In 2025, Okuda received the Master Craftsman Award as a Japanese cuisine chef for Ginza Okuda, an honor that names the craft directly and places Japanese cuisine itself at the center of the recognition.