The research of ingredients in different country……

Good morning, today I want to explain what it means to me research ingredients, and create recipe in over 100 restaurant in different country.

Can I start by giving you an explanation on Wagyu ??

Actually, the word “Wagyu” translated from Japanese means our meat, local meat, meat of our country, beef made in Japan this is the real translation so I would say in reality marbled beef similar to Japanese beef not made in Japan should not be called wagyu, anyway I do not want to bore you with these explanations but I just wanted to explain what this word means.

Let’s go back to today’s topic: this is what happened to me during a restaurant opening in Taipei a few years ago, in that period 2012 the Japanese meat had not yet been officially approved by the Taiwanese government so I was forced to do a research for products that could replace the wagyu in Taiwan. I remember we resarch for about a year in various countries: Australia, Usa and New Zeland to find this ingredient to replace a dish I had made in Japan…..

 

 

 

I found myself in this place after more than 20 hours of flight a truly spectacular place perhaps unobtainable where they produced meat wagyu type exported to Japan with a very high quality even if it had a huge difference in how the animal was treated. Sometimes the research we do is really extreme to find the product that convinces us and then to match the country where we have to start new restaurants, is not only a question of taste or price but maybe more politics and local rules that make it more difficult for the presentation of dishes in the countries where we have to arrive. Now you can understand why we are forced to change the origins of certain dishes we make for a set of rules that we are forced to respect, all this would be much easier to use the ingredients that we already use in the country where we created the recipe but I think the skill of a good chef is right to find the right product even if you are in a different country. Is a work with a long and incredible process even if is a single ingredient but that gives many satisfactions to me and my customer..so now you can understand that having more than 100 restaurants is not enough just to be good at shopping in the market or good to choice the fish of the day but we have other procedures that are really much more difficult to transmit my dishes in different country.

 

Published by Salvatore Cuomo

Salvatore Cuomo was born in Naples, Italy, in 1972, son of an Italian father and Japanese mother. Cuomo was first inspired by his father who also was an Italian Chef in Naples. He began at the young age of 11, where he trained himself in the kitchen and traveled frequently between Italy and Japan. He gradually learned how to blend the traditional Italian art of cooking with the Japanese art of perfection. A few years later he traveled to Japan with his father who opened an Italian restaurant in Chiba in 1984. About those early years Salvatore told the press that it wasn't a good starting experience: "I didn’t like Japan at all, so after one year, I went back to Italy and spent 2–3 years studying at a culinary school. When I was 18, I returned to Japan after my father became terminally ill and I have been here ever since."[3] Cuomo said that Italian Cuisine was just starting to get popular in those days. He and his two brothers decided that in order to succeed in the restaurant business in Japan they would have to understand the Japanese food mentality. They spent a couple of years researching the market before opening a new restaurant in Tokyo with what Cuomo calls "Original Neapolitan pizza." Since that time, Cuomo has been credited with catapulting Neapolitan pizza to fame in Japan, and today in all Asia with over 100 restaurant.

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