Chef Yamamoto: Thirty Years of Cooking, One Counter

People sometimes ask me how you end up in Rosemont with fourteen seats and a rice obsession. The answer is not quick. It starts thirty years ago in a kitchen that had nothing to do with sushi.

The Beginning: Teppanyaki

My first training was in teppanyaki. If you picture the theatrical version, the knives spinning and the onion volcanoes, that gives you a sense of the atmosphere, though not of what you actually learn inside it. What teppanyaki teaches is control: control of fire, of fat, of timing, and above all of visible gesture. You are performing while cooking. There is no margin for hesitation.

I spent three years learning to not hesitate. That sounds simple. It is not. Hesitation in front of a hot plate with guests watching costs you the dish and the moment simultaneously. The training instilled a kind of physical confidence that I have carried into every kitchen since, including a very different kind of counter where the gestures are smaller and the silence is heavier.

Teppanyaki is underestimated by people who view Japanese cuisine through a purist lens. The discipline it demands is real. I am grateful for those years, even though I eventually moved toward something quieter and more austere.

The Tokyo Counter That Changed Everything

I was twenty-seven years old when a colleague took me to a small counter in Tokyo. I will not name it. It seated eight. The chef worked alone. He was making only nigiri edomae, no rolls, no sashimi platter, no elaboration. Just rice, fish, and hands.

I sat down expecting to be curious. I left convinced. There was a quality of attention in that room that I had not encountered before: the chef knew exactly what he was doing with each piece, and nothing he did was for show. The whole experience was in service of the food, and the food was in service of the ingredient. It was the most honest cooking I had seen.

I asked if I could work with him. He said no, come back in two years with better hands. I went back. He accepted me.

Years Under an Edomae Master

Four years under that chef were the hardest and most formative of my career. The first six months, I did not touch fish. I cooked rice. Every morning, the same process: the washing, the soaking, the timing, the heat. The same evaluation every time. Not good enough. Again.

This is not unusual in traditional Japanese apprenticeship. It is deliberate. The point is not punishment; it is an understanding that the rice is not a supporting element. In edomae sushi, the rice is half the dish. If you cannot make perfect rice, you have no foundation. Everything built on imperfect rice is imperfect.

The fish came later: how to read freshness by sight and touch, how to butcher a whole fish correctly, how to apply the various cures and preparations of the edomae tradition. Kombu-jime, the gentle pressing of fish between sheets of kelp. Vinegar curing for saba, mackerel. Light smoking for some cuts. Each technique existed to bring the fish to its best expression, not to disguise it.

Europe and a Wider Perspective

After those four years, I worked in Osaka for another two. Then I went to Europe, first Lyon, then London. I wanted to understand what happened to Japanese technique when it moved into a different culinary tradition, and I wanted to understand European cuisine well enough to know what it could offer me in return.

The answer was more than I expected. The French approach to maturation, the British attention to cold-water seafood, the integration of acid and fat that runs through classical European cuisine: all of it was useful. I did not want to make fusion food, which is almost always a compromise in both directions. But understanding a different tradition deeply makes you sharper about your own.

Europe also showed me what a Japanese counter could mean to a non-Japanese audience. Not novelty, not exoticism, but the recognition that precision and restraint are universally appealing when they are genuine.

The Decision: Montréal, Fourteen Seats

I visited Montréal several times before deciding to open here. What struck me was the quality of the audience. Montréal diners are curious, well-travelled, opinionated in a productive way. They had eaten in good Japanese restaurants. They would come to the counter with genuine questions, not just with Instagram open.

The BYOB culture was also significant. Québec's bring-your-own-wine tradition suits a counter format extremely well. Guests arrive with bottles they have chosen thoughtfully, and that care extends to how they engage with the meal. It sets a tone.

The choice of fourteen seats was simple. A larger restaurant requires an organizational structure that puts the chef behind management rather than in front of the guests. I had spent thirty years learning to cook and learning to read a room. I wanted to use both of those things at once. Fourteen seats is the largest format where I can do that, where I can see every face and adjust accordingly.

The address, 929 Saint-Zotique Est, was not particularly strategic. The space was right. The neighbourhood, Rosemont, was a real neighbourhood, not a tourist zone. That felt honest.