Chef Yoshifumi Yamaguchi

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0:30to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. What is fusion? Sometimes I use Japanese seasonings to make Ugandan dishes. Or I cook Ugandan ingredients using Japanese cooking method. Or use Japanese seasonings with Ugandan ingredients. So the possibilities are endless. Welcome to the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. I am Eric Magash and this is a series that gives you a front row seat in the theatre where the world's most inventive artists are at work. Today, that theatre is at Yamasin Restaurant, where creativity meets culture in unexpected ways.

1:30It is a combination of Uganda and Japan. From Uganda we get the black eye beans, then from Japan we get miso. You eat too at a go.

1:45Yamasin is located in a place I know well. Although I now live in London, I grew up right here, in this part of town called Meyengatankil, One of the seven hills that make up Uganda's capital, Kampala. Now, on a trip back home, just 10 minutes from where I grew up, I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. A unique structure, clean lines, sharp angles and openness that invited admiration. This was Tank Hill Park, a 2020 gold prize winning commercial facility designed by Japanese architects. And right here within those elegant walls is Yamasen, one of the first restaurants in Kampala operated by a Japanese chef.

2:36Chef Yoshifumi Yamaguchi, or simply Chef Yoshi, brings with him a precision and artistry of Japanese cavalry art. But what makes Yamasen special is how they weave Uganda into every plate.

2:57Back when he was running a restaurant in Kyoto, it was only a dream to one day work overseas. A dream that came true when his wife was offered a job in Uganda.

3:13For two days, I spent time with him and his team, watching, learning and documenting this beautiful intersection of food, art and culture. Chef Yoshi is from Kyoto, Japan, an island nation rich in seafood and shaped by four seasons. But here in landlocked tropical Uganda, where fresh produce is available almost year-round, I wanted to know how he now creates his menu. We have the two menus. So one is a regular menu, a la carte. Then another one is omakase. Omakase, a Japanese word meaning leave it to the chef. It's a seven-course meal where the chef takes full control of taste, texture and emotion.

4:07This is Chef Yoshi's signature fusion where Japan meets Uganda.

4:15So you find some classic Japanese favorites but also many unique dishes you can only eat once that are tailored to the tastes of Ugandan customers that highlight local ingredients and food culture. The omakase, which I change every month, goes even deeper into fusion. Of course, Japanese cuisine is my foundation, but the creations also draw inspiration from everyday life in Uganda. So for me, the most important thing is having fun. So having fun when you're cooking. So do you see what you're doing as a form of art? Food is art. Not just the taste only, even the appearance, smelling, everything, even the plate, then serving style.

5:17What kind of the tools or what kind of the cutlery do we use? That's also a part of the food. Sometimes use a hand or sometimes use just sticks. So that is changing the texture and the feelings. Yeah, I think it's kind of impermanent art because you will design a nice dish and then it will be eaten.

5:46The day is going well and the restaurant is starting to fill up and the quiet time of conversation grows louder and the first dishes start to make their way out.

5:59Tilapia sashimi Ethiopian style. Is this your creation as well? Oh, yes. It looks really good on a plate. So what is this fish? This is a tilapia. So your favorite fish, I guess, in Uganda? I can't say favorite, but very limited. The fish variation in Uganda. Tilapia, nile patch, a few varieties of the fish. So I'm focusing on tilapia. So the tilapia sashimi Ethiopian style, what is it? There is a culture to eat the raw tilapia in Ethiopia. So that's the story I heard from my friend. So when I heard that story, it's totally the same with the sashimi.

6:46Eating tilapia raw here in Uganda, where almost every meal is cooked may sound daring, But here it becomes something more of a conversation between two cultures served on a single plate.

7:05So I tried to create this menu, eat tilapia as a sashimi. In Ethiopia, they served tilapia with chili, squeezed lime or lemon and some salt. So that is their style. So I respect that style. Then I fusion. I create that style mixed with my style. And then I can see you have saffizi Japanese Ugandan style. Is that your creation as well? Yes. I focus on the Ugandan salad, which is called kachumbari. So it's a very unique salad. Tomato and onion, coriander and lime and salt. I mix with some seafood, salmon, tuna, prawns and octopus. So it's a similar food with ceviche. Ceviche is just sour, the acid from the lemon or lime or any other fruits.

8:08So this time I use green mango. So green mango is a bit sour. So instead we'll use lemon and lime too much. So I use the green mango. So something fresh, sour taste, I add it. Have you found a challenge? Because Ugandans don't tend to eat raw food. What about eating raw fish? Do you get a lot of customers, Ugandan local customers, coming to eat the ceviche or the sashimi? Tilapia sashimi is not common for the Ugandan customer, I can say. But ceviche, yeah, we are getting the customers. So their culture is also now changing. They try new things and new cultures.

8:56Chef Yoshi is the mind behind the menus, the one overseeing every creation that leaves the kitchen. As the evening rush slows down, I finally get a chance to speak to his head chef, Temi Rogers, Yoshi's right-hand man. We talked about their process, how ideas move from Chef Yoshi's imagination, a dialogue between two chefs. First of all, the influence is that he has done much to marry a dish from a different continent, and then with another dish to a different continent to get one dish. One dish that caught my eye is cassava, a starchy root vegetable. It ranks second only to Matoki as a Uganda staple, loved for being cheap and reliable source of carbohydrates.

9:48It can be boiled, roasted as a street snack or even ground into a millet. In fact, in my own region in southwestern Uganda, we mix cassava flour with millet to make millet bread. So I'm curious to know, what is the Japanese decon de cassava? We do fry the cassava, but the special part of it and the unique part of it is that when we cook it in the dash, actually we simmer it in the dash, you get a special or unique taste whereby you can even eat it like eating cassava, which already has the sauce. And the presentation, tell me, you know, the art behind this beautiful looking dish. Well, actually, that presentation, the way you see it, it has the sauce down.

10:36So you start with the sauce down? Yes, the sauce down as the base on the plate. And then after putting the sauce, we arrange the cassava as the way you can see it. Arranging it horizontally and then really nice green on top. Cooker is an art. We believe that before someone eats what we have presented, he eats by sight.

11:00The cassava chips are beautifully presented. Golden slices tucked neatly on a white slate plate. Their crisp edges are glittering under the heat lamp that keeps it warm before it reaches the customer. A spring of sea salt and finely chopped chives catches the eye. The aroma is subtle but inviting. Seemingly simple dish reveted by a refined Japanese touch. day one comes to the end and i'm left yearning for food myself

11:38so on the chef's recommendation i've just ordered myself a ceviche so the ceviche has got some seafood in it but it's of course cooked seafood but the rest the tilapia is seared you know with The task of lime juice and coriander is beautiful.

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12:34You are listening to In the Studio from the BBC World Service with me, Eric Mugage. We are with Chef Yoshifumi Yamaguchi, who has given me an exclusive access to his Calvary Theatre to document how he creates his unique sea-inspired flavours using landlocked Ugandan ingredients.

13:03The next day I arrived well ahead of time. On this occasion, they are cooking for a special guest. On the menu, a seven-course journey. Starters include a creamy bean potage soup, a collaboration led by the head chef Demi Rogers, followed by chicken and ground nuts seasoned with Japanese peppers. For the mains, a sashimi of seared tilapia and tuna, followed by Japanese-style gazpacho, and a bold fusion dish, matoke miso, bringing Uganda and Japanese flavors together. On the lead is Chef Demi Rogers.

14:07in my village. We call it Magera. We use it for, actually it's very good with Karo. I don't know if you know Karo. I know Karo. It's kind of a minute stash, right? Yeah. So we eat it with Karo. And then, so when I came here and then after learning from him, I was like, I think I can make a soup out of the sauce that we have in my village. So I made it and this is called black eye beans. Oh, these are black eyed beans. Okay. In our language, we call it Mpindi. Mpindi. I think in Uganda they call it empindi. Empindi. And what's your language? I'm Emugwere, from Budaka. All right. So this is a representative of all Uganda.

14:47So you're getting something from the eastern Uganda. And then I'm going to see how it meets Japan. So when I wanted to make a soup, I got these black-eyed beans or empindi. Then we soak it in hot water to soften them so that we remove these skins. You know, we remove these skins one by one. Wow, that's a long process. We remove all the skin. Who does that? Do you do that or you delegate someone else? It's just teamwork. We promote teamwork here. So we all come together and then do the peeling. We blend it. Then that's when now the Japanese marriage comes in. Instead of putting salt to taste, we use miso.

15:29So miso was introduced to you by Chef Yoshi. Yes. How did he say use it? The miso is soybean paste. Soybean paste, okay. It's fermented soybean paste. The process takes a minimum of one year to ferment. Now, when you are testing, I'm testing our original margata from my village and then with the test of Japan. Great. So will I get a chance to test it? Maybe just testing because, as I told you, it takes time and it's made on special order. But since you are here, you may just have a little bit of a test. Okay, thank you so much.

16:12The other starter is a chicken salad. It was now the executive chef Yoshi to go through his museum plus, the chef language for setup required before cooking. So this is part of your seven-course meal. Yeah. So this is the main, can you tell me what's in your ingredient spot? My main ingredient is the salmon. Okay. Someone from Norway. Okay. So we have someone from Norway. Yes, yes. And some marinade. What is it? Marinade. I think the chef Roger explained about the miso. Oh, so it's a miso. Miso is a Japanese seasoning. This one is idea from the miso. But this time I use the matoke instead of soya beans.

16:58So matoke are a staple food. Yeah. So I mashed matoke and mixed with salt and koji. yeast, then preserved for that year. Now I can use.

17:14Matoke are a staple food in Uganda and much loved in East Africa. They are sovery green banana and farm, quite different from a sweet banana or a plantain most people know. When cooked, matoke becomes soft and slightly creamy. It has mild flavors that absorbs the taste of whatever it is cooked with, whether it is ground nut sauce, beef stew or vegetables. In many Ugandan homes, matoke isn't just food. It is a symbol of comfort and tradition.

17:51I grew up eating matoke every day for lunch and dinner, but I've never imagined... So this customer has been waiting, the meal has been processed for one year. I think so. The guest finally arrived. Chef Rogers is sending starters. The chako is starting to get ready. But before that, there is still time to ask Chef Yoshi about another project at the heart of his Uganda-Japan fusion success. From farmer to the table. Where did you get your ingredients? So, for example, tilapia, we met the potential farmer, the tilapia farmer in Jinja. We learned how to farm in the tilapia and how it's important.

18:45I tried to taste and I tried to cook. So normally we direct to have a partnership between the farmer or supplier with the restaurant, the table. not just serve to the customer as a food. We'd like to serve with a history.

19:11Chef Yoshi is now preparing to start grilling the mains and the starter plates are now returning in the kitchen. We start to go through what he was about to serve. So start from sashimi. sashimi is Japanese cuisine we serve the fresh fish served with soy sauce and wasabi so that is a normal style but for this time we are going to serve tuna tuna from Tanzania and tilapia so tilapia from our supplier there is a charcoal grill there and a bit of grass is that where you're going to cook the meal? Yes. So this time I seared tuna and tilapia.

20:06The cooking started. I watch as Chef Yoshi grieves spinach, eggplant, tuna, salmon, and tilapia with careful precision. On a black slate, it spreads a smooth eggplant puree in brushstrokes, adding depth and contrast to the grilled spinach. The miso is unmistakably Japanese, yet it carries a touch of Ugandan warmth, made this time from Matoki, the country's beloved staple. So, tuna, we seared by rice straw. What's the purpose of smoking it on rice straws? So, when we use a rice straw, that aroma affects the tuna. But tuna, you know the tuna is redfish, red meat. So that meaning has many hemoglobin.

20:57The hemoglobin with the aroma of the rice tolose can change to the umami flavors.

21:08All the mains are served. Chef Yoshi believes that before desserts, the guests should refresh with enzyme juice. Using apple bananas locally known as Ndizi, he made a juice that brought back good memories when growing up. So I used that sweet banana and mixed with other spice with sugar and preserved in a container. For this time it's 10 days preserving in a room temperature. then ferment it. So I used that juice for making this banana enzyme juice. I drank on it and it kind of reminded me, my childhood, to drink banana juice without sugar. But the adults would put in sorghum, which works as yeast.

22:05And it tastes like when I was able to grow up, it tastes like that wine called Tonto here. Is that right to say?

22:20The special guest was taking his time as you would expect, making his way through a seven-course meal. As I used to be a chef myself, I decided to take a test whether I still had some cooking skills left in me. I had a go at preparing one of the dishes on the menu.

22:42One of the recipes they have, it's called dashimaki, which is a Japanese Thai omelette. That's why it's called dashimaki. Dashimaki. Dashimaki is the dashi, the stock. Yeah. Then maki means raw in Japanese. Okay, hold for me the microphone and tell me what to do. So what should I do first? How many eggs per portion? Two eggs. Two eggs. Let me get the mixing bowl with the mixing bowl. Two eggs. 10 minutes of water, 90 dashi, which you add together and whisk. Can you use chopsticks? No. Okay, he's showing me how to mix the egg with chopsticks. And in a sticky pan, right? Yeah. Okay. Get the pan with it.

23:29So it's not actually a pan as we know, the round one. This is a square pan. Actually, that is specifically made for dashimaki. Okay.

23:42So this one you can't flip. I was going to show off my skin, so flipping, but this is a square one. I can't do it.