Yasaka at Park Hyatt

From Tokyo discipline to the Kyoto counter

The hand on the iron has to decide before the ingredient gives way. Kentaro Koyama, Chef de Cuisine at Yasaka at Park Hyatt in Kyoto, works in that narrow interval, where teppanyaki exposes timing rather than hiding it. His listed path is compact: a chef role at a French restaurant in Tokyo in 2022, then the Chef de Cuisine post here in 2023. That is not a long public lineage, and the restaurant does not set out a chain of named teachers for him. The useful shape is still clear. Tokyo gave him the discipline of a French kitchen; Kyoto gives him a counter where the guest can watch the method happen at arm’s length.

At Yasaka, Koyama’s station asks for composure as much as command. Teppanyaki can look simple from the seat, because the tools are plain and the heat is visible, but the margin is small. The chef stands between the ingredient, the plate, and the room, adjusting the pass in real time. In a hotel restaurant, that work also carries the pace of the house around it. Service moves with polish, the room holds its quiet, and the cooking still has to land hot, cut cleanly, and arrive without strain.

A program built on heat and timing

The restaurant names its craft plainly: teppanyaki. That means the iron is not background equipment; it is the bench. Seasonal vegetables, high-quality ingredients, and set-course cooking appear in the public account of the dining room, but the value of the method sits in sequence. The chef brings each element to the surface, watches the color, controls the rest, then sends it forward while the next piece is already entering the pass.

Koyama’s French-kitchen experience matters here without needing to be overstated. A French station trains the hand to think in stages, heat, sauce, garnish, plate. At Yasaka, the stages are compressed and exposed. The guest sees the decision, not the prep list behind it. The cut of a vegetable, the order in which it meets the iron, the pause before it leaves the surface, these are the working grammar of the counter. The house publishes Koyama’s appointment, not a detailed recipe book, so the craft is best read through the format itself: direct heat, close service, and a chef whose current role places him at the center of the exchange.

The room facing Yasaka Pagoda

The address places the restaurant inside Park Hyatt Kyoto at 360 Masuyachō, in Higashiyama Ward, with Yasaka Pagoda in the sightline. That view changes the temper of the room. It is not a theatrical dining room in the loud sense; the counter, the pass, and the glass carry most of the pressure. Guests arrive with the city already framed, then turn back to the iron, where the work is smaller, hotter, and closer.

Reviews of the room return often to the pagoda and the service, and those details matter because they set the pace in which Koyama cooks. The room asks for restraint. Nothing in teppanyaki at this level benefits from hurry: the ingredient needs its minute on the surface, the plate needs its order, the chef needs enough silence to judge the next gesture. In that setting, Koyama’s current chapter remains deliberately focused, a Kyoto counter, a visible station, and Yasaka Pagoda beyond the glass.