Keishi SUGIMURA

Chef : 1 restaurant Keishi Sugimura's passion for pâté en croûte makes him one of the leading Japanese chefs promoting Burgundy gastronomy at his double "toqué" restaurant, Le Bénaton, in Beaune.

Presentation

Keishi Sugimura has had an atypical career. In 1995, the Japanese chef embarked on a course of study at the Tsuji school in Osaka, then at Château Escoffier in France. He completed an internship at Bénaton, in Beaune, without knowing that he would become its chef almost twenty years later...

But before that, he left for Tokyo to join the brigade at Queen Alice. " In Japan, when you're starting out, you work in the dining room for a year, then move on to the kitchen", he explains. For two years, he trained in room service, then in modern French cuisine. Problem: what he really wanted was to learn traditional French cuisine. So he went to work at La Table de Com'ma in Tokyo. Keishi Sugimura stayed for eight years, working in every position from the dining room to the kitchen. "It was a small restaurant, but the chef had a high level of technique. I learned all the basics of French cuisine there. "It was also there that he discovered the art of pâté en croûte, of which he would become one of the masters, to the point of coming second in the world championship of the specialty a few years later.

2007 marked his return to France. "I sent a lot of letters. A few Côte-d'Or restaurants wrote back, but I decided to go to Bénaton, because I already knew the chef. "His rise there was meteoric : from chef de partie, he became sous-chef, then... chef and owner! In 2015, Bruno Monnoir asked him to take over. Keishi Sugimura and his wife, Juri Shimozono, accepted. "I hadn't even thought of having a restaurant in France!" enthuses the man who was immediately crowned with 2 fine toques and the Trophée Jeune Talent Bourgogne Gault&Millau trophy.

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