Natsuko
Nakamura

Natsuko grew up in a kitchen that smelled of dashi... Quite literally, as her mother Reiko built one of Tokyo's most beloved cooking schools from scratch.

Over thirty years of teaching, writing, and travelling, she has been trained in New York, Florence, Paris, and Hong Kong, run her own cooking school in Manhattan, written over 10 cookbooks, and appeared regularly on Japanese television, all while continuing to teach at the family school she grew up in.

Somewhere along the way, she noticed that wherever she cooked Japanese food abroad, even without access to every traditional ingredient, the soul of a dish survived if the technique and intention were right.

She wants her guests to leave not just with appreciation for Japanese food, but with the knowledge and confidence to make it at home in the kitchen and the ingredients they actually have, for the people they love. A single afternoon in her studio in Tokyo, she believes, should be the beginning of a cooking life, not a souvenir of a trip.