Japanese chefs are known for being some of the most skilled in existence, honing their craft over decades in the pursuit of perfection in a certain culinary discipline. It’s this that makes Japan a culinary mecca for chefs around the world, who revere the attention to detail, focus on quality produce and deep understanding of flavour that make up its cuisine. For chef Masaki Sugisaki, the traditional (and at times restricting) way Japanese chefs work formed the basis of his skills, but he truly flourished after moving to London and now leads the team at Dinings SW3, a luxurious Japanese restaurant in Chelsea with plenty of European influences.

Despite his culinary skill today, Masaki wasn’t one of those people who know they want to be a chef from the get-go – in fact, he actively hated it at first. ‘My parents ran a traditional kaiseki restaurant in Japan, so I was born and raised in the kitchen,’ he explains. ‘When I turned fifteen I started working there as I was the eldest son, and in Japan it’s traditional for the eldest to take over the family business. So while my friends were playing after school I was a kitchen porter or working front of house. My father would regularly wake me up at 3am to go to the fish market, then send me off to school, then I’d continue to work in the restaurant in the evenings. Unsurprisingly, I hated it at the time! But eventually I started to get into it and realise I had a responsibility to learn as much as I could.’

While he had finally caught the cooking bug, Masaki’s desire to travel and experience cultures beyond Japan was strong, so in the early 1990s he moved to London to see what the city was like. He quickly landed a job at a Japanese restaurant, but was shocked at what he saw. ‘No one really knew what Japanese food was apart from sushi, and even then many customers were scared to eat raw fish!’ he says. ‘The quality of the fish was scarily bad too, but there was nothing else available. I struggled over the next five years, trying to introduce different elements of Japanese cuisine to the customers, but then I returned to Japan as there was a recession and my parents’ restaurants were going through a tough time.’

Masaki’s return to Japan saw him take on his first head chef role, and while his parents had to sell a few of their restaurants, the high-end kaiseki ones were turned around and saved. A few years later, his parents wanted to retire and asked Masaki to take over the business, but after experiencing the freedom of being a chef in London, the very strict protocols that must be followed in a traditional Japanese restaurant became stifling. Instead, Masaki sold the family business, raising enough money for his parents to happily retire to the countryside. After a spell working at a large sushi restaurant in Tokyo, the opportunity to become part of the team at Nobu Berkeley Street back in London arose – and Masaki jumped at the chance.

‘What they were doing at Nobu just blew my mind. Everything they did was very Japanese and of the highest quality, but they were able to translate the food into something that appealed to European diners. They were communicating with the customers and in turn those people were learning more about Japanese food. When I started work there, it was like a dream world.’