David Bouley on Japanese Influences

An opportunity came up and I decided

to build a test kitchen and an Asian restaurant

because I started to understand

the benefits of Japanese cooking.

What is it about Japanese cooking that is

so interesting to you?

For me, I had closed Bouley And I was on the way to

cook for the royal family in Thailand.

On the way there, Misisugi, who I knew,

he says Come to Japan for training.

I'm going to show you what Japanese food is.

I went a few weeks early with my staff,

and they taught me kaiseki cooking.

I was just totally seduced by it,

by the taste, by the purity.

At that moment, I understood why Japanese people

like what I was doing at Bouley,

particularly the tomato water, which I think

we were the first one here in the states.

The level of purity, the connection

to mother nature, is what they live by.

It's interesting because some of these ingredients

that in Japan were here first,

and went there after the war.

How the Japanese, we can learn some much from them

because they only focus on a small

margin of things in their whole life,

and they elevate that short list high up

We expand out this way, and try to go up.

So, they could do the same thing for

40 years, and do it better every

single day and never be bored.

I tell my staff that that was also a

realization I learned from them, because

I probably have a handful of signature dishes,

but through those signature dishes

which I've been doing all this time,

I try to do them better and better.

And I tell my staff that is the process of which

I have been able to learn how to do

a thousand other dishes.