Hiroyuki Sakai

Born in April 1942 on the Korean Peninsula, then under Japanese rule, the eldest of three children. When he was three, his father was killed in the war. As the war ended, the family returned to his mother’s hometown of Izumi, in Kagoshima.

By middle school he was the one at the stove, cooking in place of his mother and sister, who were out working. “If your job is cooking, food will follow you wherever you go.” Determined to learn a trade as quickly as he could, he left high school and, at sixteen, left home behind.

In Osaka he worked at a catering shop making boxed lunches by day and studied at cooking school by night. At seventeen he entered the kitchen of Hotel New Osaka — and there he met French cuisine.

At nineteen he set off alone for Perth, Australia, honing his skills in a hotel kitchen. Returning in 1963, he spent three years training at “Shiki” in Ginza, under a pioneer of French cooking in Japan.

After serving as head chef at Coco Palms Aoyama and John Kanaya Azabu, he opened La Rochelle in Minami-Aoyama in 1980, at thirty-eight.

He held back on heavy seasoning and let Japan’s seasonal ingredients speak, composing the seasons with French technique. His “French kaiseki” showed French cuisine in Japan a new form.

On February 27, 1994, he succeeded Yutaka Ishinabe, the original, to become the second Iron Chef French on “Iron Chef.” Over five years and seven months he fought 86 battles: 70 wins, 15 losses, one draw. No Iron Chef won more, and he came to be known as “the strongest Iron Chef.”

When he heard a voice from the commentary booth say, “Monsieur is surely going to steam this,” he made a point of grilling it instead — a story he later told with a laugh. Never play the move they have already read. That playfulness and fighting spirit kept millions of households glued to their televisions.

In 2009 he was named a Contemporary Master Craftsman by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and in 2021 received the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award. Now in his eighties, he still goes to the gym twice a week. “When something comes along, I need a body that won’t let the chance slip by,” he says. A chef who will never stop working.