March 23, 2020
There is something rather remarkable and admirable in chef Kei Kobayashi’s quiet self-assurance.
In a conversation with the recently minted Michelin three-starred chef—the first Japanese chef in France to be admitted into the exclusive three-starred club—Kobayashi makes it clear that from day one of moving to France 20 years ago, he had one goal in mind.
To obtain three Michelin stars.
Today, that kind of ambition is more or less conceivable. During the last decade, Paris’s fine-dining landscape has opened up considerably to the potential of foreign-born talent, thanks in part to the soaring growth of both inbound and outbound travel, globalization and social media.
But 20 years ago, the notion that an immigrant chef—and a person of color at that—would harbor such a lofty dream and dare to imagine themselves being accepted as a peer to chef titans, such as Joël Robuchon and Alain Ducasse, on French soil was audacious, brash and verging on crazy.
“I’m sure that people made fun of me whenever I talked about it,” Kobayashi says, chuckling.
After moving from Japan to France at the age of 21 and working in Michelin-starred kitchens throughout the country for about 10 years, including Restaurant Alain Ducasse at the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris, Kobayashi broke out on his own to open Restaurant Kei in 2011.
