Who Is Author Yoshihiro Imai?
Yoshihiro Imai is a chef who comes from the countryside in Ibaraki prefecture. As he was born in 1982, he is 40 years old in 2022.
According to SportsKeeda, he opened his restaurant in 2015 in between Kyoto’s Ginakakuji and Honen-in temples. Enjoying a simple life, the chef finds meaning in his daily routine and reconnects his customers with nature. He links nature with food and states that cooking is just a way for us to praise and have faith in nature.
He released his cookbook Circle and began traveling and cooking as a freelance chef. Later, he opened his first restaurant “Monk” in late 2015 in Kyoto. He published his 2nd book Monk: Light and Shadow on the Philosopher's Path, from Phaidon Press in 2021.
In his authored book, he noted that his work at Monk is "a direct reflection” of how he likes to live everyday life.
Talking about his journey to the professional culinary sector, he became interested in cooking quite late in his life. He was perhaps 23 years old, working as a hotel service man in Nagano on the mountainside of Japan. But, one fine day, when he visited a pizza restaurant called Enboca, he found the pizza satiable and deemed it an interesting experience. Later, after a week, when he was walking in the forest, he reminisced about the taste of that same pizza.
He started his career by going back to Enboca and getting a job there. He never went to culinary school or formal training. He believes that he has always been an outsider in the restaurant because of an absence of any educational training.
