Natsuko Shoji

Été, Tokyo

Young Japanese chef breaking the mould by marrying food and fashion

Since opening Été in 2014 at age 24, Natsuko Shoji has powered past thousands of Tokyo chefs to rise to the top. And although she started small, first with a tiny tart shop and then an18sqm Shibuya space open for cake orders and elaborate French-Japanese tasting menus by referral only (a format popular in Japan), word of her ethereal creations soon got out, luring customers such as soccer star David Beckham, Noma chef-owner René Redzepi, and even contemporary artist Takashi Murakami.

Shoji is, in fact, no stranger to the 50 Best family. After graduating from high school, the chef scored a position under chef Hiroyasu Kawate at his acclaimed Florilège, the forward-thinking, French technique-based Tokyo favourite that has been a high-flier in recent Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants lists. After a quick three years, Kawate promoted Shoji to sous chef, but she eventually chose to decamp and pursue her own dream.

That dream became Été, a single-table restaurant and cake laboratory encased in glass and found within the heart of the city. Inside, Shoji chooses to illuminate fashion memorabilia: a Chanel tennis racket, a Franck Muller-designed candle holder, a gold Cartier placard. Not simply decorative, each piece represents a unique brand collaboration in which the chef has participated, teaming up with some the world’s most respected design houses. And that’s because her culinary art stems from style, with slices, cubes and orbs of pristine fruits and vegetables often arranged into patterns inspired by iconic designs from haute couture.

Celebrating the unlikely intersection between fashion and food, Shoji quickly became Japan’s most coveted pastry chef, winning the Asia’s Best Pastry Chef Award in 2020. Thanks to her ongoing success and the continuous demand for her art, in December 2019 she relocated Été to a more spacious, sleek new home one subway stop away from her original location. Along the way, she chose to amend her cake ordering and dining reservation policy to open it up to the public (albeit with only six seats per sitting), building a rising profile within the industry.

Her intricately crafted 10-course tasting menu at Été combines sweet and savoury cooking techniques applied to prized Japanese ingredients, from a serving of ayu (Japanese sweetfish) reimagined as a taco, to a sea urchin tart with cured egg yolk and Jinhua ham. One of the chef’s most popular – and Instagram-friendly – creations is the savoury mille feuille, a creation featuring layers of puff pastry filled with shallot mousse and gooseberry pickles, and topped with caviar.

One of the few high-profile female chefs in Japan, part of an even smaller group of cooks recognised for both their sweet and savoury creations, and the first cook ever to win both a Best Pastry Chef and a Best Female Chef title in the history of the 50 Best lists – Shoji is breaking barriers and inspiring a generation of young cooks in the process.

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