Profile | How Japanese chef of 3-Michelin-star restaurant Ta Vie in Hong Kong fell for French food
Japanese chef Hideaki Sato of Ta Vie talks about how Chinese food influences his French cuisine and his recent ‘dream come true’ in France
This summer, Hideaki Sato closed his fine-dining restaurant Ta Vie in Hong Kong, which received its third Michelin star in 2023, for several weeks, reopening it only at the beginning of September.
While done primarily for renovations and redecoration following nine years of almost non-stop operation, another reason for the pause was for the chef to embark on a gourmet adventure on the other side of the globe, in the grand cathedral town of Reims, in France’s Champagne region.
We are talking in the lush garden of the sumptuous 19th-century mansion that is home to the Maison Mumm bubbly, as well as a restaurant, La Table des Chefs, which runs a programme that sees a different chef’s vision take over the kitchen every three months.
Sato is the first overseas chef to be invited in the programme’s history. He is spending two weeks in Reims training La Table’s permanent four-man brigade to ensure they can achieve the same exacting standards as at Ta Vie over the next three months.
When we meet in the summer, he had just finished serving a preview of his six-course pairing menu, using primarily local seasonal ingredients, to a demanding group of food and wine journalists.
When the meal is over, Sato begins to tell the story of his decidedly under-the-radar climb to three-Michelin-star glory in his adopted home of Hong Kong.
