When Yukou Nishimura, head chef of Kamosu, chanced upon a collection of yellowing notebooks, he would come to find that they held more in them for him than just recipes
In the five paces required to take diners from the elevator to the noren entrance curtain of Kamosu, a kappo restaurant tucked 15 floors above the streets of Central in Hong Kong, diners will pass by an unassuming, yellowing notebook that would be otherwise ignored, were it not for the gallery-grade glass display box it's housed in.
"It’s a treasure that I can use forever," says Yukou Nishimura of his late father's cookbook. The young head chef regards it as an heirloom of sorts, recalling a period when the Japanese community was at its height in Hong Kong, and the name Nishimura was on every foodie's lips.
The year was 1985 when Hiromi Nishimura, a free-wheeling sushi chef who had tired of the strict customs of sushi in his native Japan, struck out with his first Hong Kong restaurant, Nishimura, at the Regal Meridian Hotel (today the Regal Kowloon Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui). The restaurant was a product of the times—catering to a newly affluent, ascendant middle class in Hong Kong that craved international flavours. For Hiromi, it carved out a space for him to experiment with modernising what he saw as a stagnant culinary craft.
Yet Hiromi's penchant for business saw him turn Nishimura into a one-stop shop for Japanese cuisine, with different sections dedicated to tempura, teppanyaki, washoku and more. This approach certainly worked, as he opened a further three restaurants over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. "Almost everyone in their fifties and sixties knew about my father," says Yukou. "If you mention the name Nishimura, they would know that it was a Japanese restaurant."
Raised in Hong Kong for 16 years with stints living in Singapore and Japan, Yukou had always looked up to his father. But, while studying at university in Japan, he received news that every child dreads: his father had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. Without delay, Yukou returned to Hong Kong to apprentice with Hiromi, absorbing his father's knowledge while it could still be passed down. “I worked with him for almost one and a half years, and he taught me about sushi. He taught me how to cut the fish like everything he had [learnt] before.”
Read more: No guts, no glory: Why offal is becoming the cut of choice
Tragically, Hiromi succumbed to his illness in 2013, leaving behind Yukou, Hiromi's wife, and his two daughters. "In that moment I realised I had to earn money, because I didn't have any skills at that time," recalls Yukou. While sorting through his father's belongings prior to the funeral in Miyazaki Prefecture, Yukou chanced upon Hiromi's handwritten cookbooks—numbering 15 in total—which detailed the recipes he had designed and collected over the years.
For Yukou, they were a window into his father's mind. "When he passed away, he was already 73, but his heart was still very young. He loved to learn new things and taste new dishes—not only from Japanese cuisine, but French, Chinese and even Spanish food." Yukou faithfully studied the cookbooks, recreating the recipes for his mother to taste and relying on her memories of Hiromi's cooking to refine his own skills.
Emboldened, Yukou decided to immerse himself in Japanese cuisine, taking up a post at Mutsukari, a renowned kappo restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo for three years. Then, in 2018, he returned to Hong Kong to take over the helm of Fukumura, the last restaurant his father opened in Hong Kong—but with the onset of the social unrest and the Covid-19 pandemic, Yukou decided to go back to basics, switching to an F&B consulting company to learn more about business management.
It was during this time when he met Ed Tseng, the owner of a sushi restaurant in Central that was struggling to stand out amidst a boom in omakase dining. Tseng immediately saw the potential in a restaurant headed by the young chef. “I had tried his father’s cooking when I was nine years old, and now I’m 41,” Tseng recalls. “When I met him and asked him his name, he said Nishimura. That triggered my memory.”
Similarly, Yukou relished the opportunity to head up his own restaurant and carve his path outside of his father's far-reaching reputation. Together, the pair decided to close Tseng's existing restaurant in December 2022, rebranding it as Kamosu (which translates to "fermentation" in Japanese). When it reopened one month later, Kamosu's offerings had been slimmed down to a single omakase menu of kappo cuisine, with its courses reimagined every month according to the seasons in Japan and paired with a procession of sake selected by Tseng, a seasoned sommelier.
Don't miss: Gordon Ramsay on making the most of every moment
