15 years ago, 3 Japanese chefs met in a Sydney bar. They went their separate ways, but ‘fate’ reunited them in Hong Kong

By Maggie Hiufu Wong, CNN

Hong Kong (CNN) — When asked to recall the first time they met, Japanese chefs Shun Sato and Toru Takano struggle to remember the details.

“I was in Australia from 2005 to 2014. So we met sometime in between?” Sato asks his friend.

“Maybe in 2009 or 2010?” Takano shrugs unsurely and laughs.

“I was drinking in a Sydney bar after work. I found another Japanese guy in the bar. I said, ‘Hi, are you Japanese working here?’ He was also a chef. Same topic. We could talk,” says Sato of the Aussie origins of their friendship.

Takano adds helpfully: “I don’t remember why we were at that bar.”

The two tilt their heads, trying unsuccessfully to conjure memories of the night.

Rolling her eyes and raising her hand, Ami Hamasaki – Takano’s wife – chimes in, “I remember.”

“I was drinking with some friends at that bar and I got very drunk. So I called Toru to pick me up,” she says.

“Then another drunken guy (Sato) was here. They started talking. I wanted to go home but Toru said to me, ‘Don’t go yet. I like this guy.’ And they kept talking.”

More than a decade later, the trio randomly met again – this time in Hong Kong, where they became fast friends and eventually joined forces to open Enishi, one of Hong Kong’s newest teppanyaki restaurants. The name is a tribute to their friendship – it means “destined encounter” or “fate” in Japanese.

United by a desire to see the world

The culinary business runs in Sato’s blood – his father owns an izakaya bar in the Japanese city of Sendai and he grew up helping out at the restaurant.

Although he loves Japanese cuisine, Sato has always aimed to broaden his culinary horizons beyond his country’s borders. He worked his way up in a French restaurant in Tokyo from the age of 19 before a friend working at Yoshii, a two-Michelin-star Japanese omakase restaurant in Sydney, reached out about a job opportunity.

“I was pretty young. I could always come back to Japan anytime. Going overseas, it was better to go at a young age,” says Sato.

So he moved to Sydney and became the sous chef at Yoshii.

Hamasaki, meanwhile, had always dreamt of living in another country. At the age of 19, she went to work as a server in a teppanyaki restaurant in Kobe before the restaurant’s head chef started training her in the kitchen.

“I’ve always wanted to go abroad since I was small because I wanted to learn new cultures,” she says.

“And I was lucky to be a chef as I could work anywhere. But it was very difficult to find Japanese teppanyaki restaurants outside Japan. Most of them focused on performative teppanyaki.”

So when Hamasaki was offered a job at a teppanyaki restaurant on Australia’s Gold Coast in 2009, she took it.

Takano, on the other hand, had always wanted to go down under before even getting into the culinary industry.

“My dream was to go to Australia,” says the chef.

“But after graduation, I had no cooking skills and didn’t know how (I would get to) Australia. Ten years later I found a solution.”

The plan: learn how to cook and deepen his understanding of Japanese cuisine, then use those skills to get a job in Australia.

“Two different dreams became one dream,” says Takano.

Determined, he finally got an offer to work at a teppanyaki restaurant in Australia in 2009 – the same one as Hamasaki.

The meet-ups and the breakup

“When we first met, he told me he was one year older than me. That was a lie. Eleven years,” Hamasaki tells CNN Travel as her husband gives an embarrassed smile.

It wasn’t long before the pair began going out.

“On our first date, we went to a musical in Brisbane because I wanted to watch ‘Cats,’” she recalls.

“He said he loved musicals, too. Once the music started, he started sleeping. I was super upset.”

But those cheeky fibs didn’t deter her.

“(Thinking back), that was quite funny actually. He is a really kind guy so I liked him very much,” says Hamasaki.

Soon, the dates led to holidays, with the pair traveling to different Australian cities to sightsee. It was during one of their Sydney trips that they met Sato at the sports bar.

Even though the atmosphere was friendly, they didn’t immediately become close pals.

“I didn’t stay for too long,” says Sato. “I was already (wasted) before Takano arrived. I had to go to work the next day. We exchanged contacts on Facebook and said we’d contact each other when we visited our cities.”

They kept in touch a bit on social media, but fate took two of them elsewhere.

Sato moved to London to work for another restaurant.

Hamasaki accepted a job offer in Dubai.

Takano stayed on the Gold Coast.

The couple assumed the move meant the end of their relationship.

“It was like, ‘I enjoyed it very much but bye-bye’,” Hamasaki says of their farewell.

Destined for Dubai

But the separation only lasted for a year before Takano also found a job in Dubai. He didn’t tell his ex-girlfriend he was coming, opting instead to show up out of the blue.

“I was so surprised,” says Hamasaki.

Though Takano says hotel executives invited him to work in Dubai, his wife has another take on the situation: “He just wanted to chase me.”

Takano admits that her presence certainly sweetened the deal.

“If Ami wasn’t in Dubai, I would not be in Dubai and wouldn’t accept the offer.”

Yet he only stayed in the UAE city for eight months before moving again for a job in Monaco. This time, though, they decided to try to make it work.

“Our relationship was long distance. Our communication was only on Skype and email,” says Hamasaki, who stayed in Dubai alone for another year before moving back to Japan to take a break from the male-dominated world of restaurants.

“I was doing nails,” Hamasaki chuckles, her husband visibly surprised by this new information.

‘I pushed open the door and saw these two there’

In 2016, Takano was invited to helm the kitchen at a teppanyaki restaurant in Hong Kong and asked Hamasaki to join him.

She did just that and the pair got married a year later.

Then, one night that same year, a familiar scene took place in Hong Kong.

“I went to a friend’s restaurant after work. I pushed open the door and – what the f**k – I saw these two sitting there,” says Sato, who unbeknownst to Takano and Hamasaki had moved to Hong Kong in 2015.

The three became close friends, with Sato and Takano developing their own special bond.

“We talk about everything, mostly work because we are both workaholics. We do share life experiences with each other and we always meet after service for gatherings with wine too,” says Sato.

After helming the kitchens of a few restaurants, he decided to open his own eatery – Censu – in 2021. The venue is inspired by traditional Japanese izakaya food and the Wabi-sabi concept – “the appreciation of imperfect beauty and simplicity.”

The idea for Enishi came up during an after-service gathering with Takano.

“Censu was my solo project and I always want to have something with my good bonds,” says Sato.

In Enishi, dishes are influenced by the three chefs – as well as their new home city.

There’s a refreshingly modern take on sashimi, as well as a crispy and creamy zucchini flower tempura.

The teppanyaki spring roll with shirasu (whitebait), is a fusion of Hong Kong and Japanese food cultures. The chefs have also brought pieces of their hometown to the menu, such as oyster sanbaizu (a rice vinegar, sugar and soy sauce dressing) from Sato’s home prefecture, Miyagi, as well as Hamasaki’s recipe for niku miso (miso and minced pork sauce) over daikon.

“It’s the combination of our experiences and stories. You seldom see a teppanyaki restaurant with a French/Western presentation, and some of the dishes that we create are from our own families,” says Sato. “For example, the pot rice is from Toru’s mother’s way and we used our culinary experience to refine it to be served proudly.”

Though the trio works on the menu together, the married couple helms the kitchen at Enishi, while Sato spends most of his time in Censu, which is just a 10-minute walk away.

Remembering his second overseas encounter with the couple, Sato says he is still surprised by the path their lives took.

“We met in another city, again, in the same situation as when we were in Australia,” he says.

The difference this time is that Takano and Sato haven’t stopped talking since.

“I walk here almost every day during break,” says Sato of his Enishi visits.

“We hang out six times a week. I believe in fate, I always believe that meeting a new person or experience would give you a new lesson. Everyone counts in my life and I am so glad that I met (Toro and Ami) along the way.”

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