Yoshihiro Imai is the owner of a restaurant named Monk in Japan.
In his restaurant, cooking using a wood-fired oven is the theme. Likewise, he hopes that dining in his eatery place evokes countless memories of the gifts offered to us by mother nature.
Imai also hopes to leave an impression as if the customers were deep in the forests or the blue ocean. He has come into public interest following his involvement in Netflix’s Chef’s Table: Pizza, which premieres on September 7. Aside from him, the show also features five other masters of pizza Ann Kim, Chris Bianco, Gabriele Bonci, Franco Pepe, and Sarah Minnick.
This reality program goes inside the kitchens of chefs whose creativity elevates the ordinary dish to an art form via their unique flavors, inspiring backgrounds, and passion.
Who Is Author Yoshihiro Imai?
Yoshihiro Imai is a chef who comes from the countryside in Ibaraki prefecture. As he was born in 1982, he is 40 years old in 2022.
According to SportsKeeda, he opened his restaurant in 2015 in between Kyoto’s Ginakakuji and Honen-in temples. Enjoying a simple life, the chef finds meaning in his daily routine and reconnects his customers with nature. He links nature with food and states that cooking is just a way for us to praise and have faith in nature.
He released his cookbook Circle and began traveling and cooking as a freelance chef. Later, he opened his first restaurant “Monk” in late 2015 in Kyoto. He published his 2nd book Monk: Light and Shadow on the Philosopher’s Path, from Phaidon Press in 2021.
In his authored book, he noted that his work at Monk is “a direct reflection” of how he likes to live everyday life.
Talking about his journey to the professional culinary sector, he became interested in cooking quite late in his life. He was perhaps 23 years old, working as a hotel service man in Nagano on the mountainside of Japan. But, one fine day, when he visited a pizza restaurant called Enboca, he found the pizza satiable and deemed it an interesting experience. Later, after a week, when he was walking in the forest, he reminisced about the taste of that same pizza.
He started his career by going back to Enboca and getting a job there. He never went to culinary school or formal training. He believes that he has always been an outsider in the restaurant because of an absence of any educational training.
Yoshihiro Imai Wife And Married Life
Yoshihiro Imai’s wife’s name is Ena, and she is a yoga instructor by profession.
Well, his love partner runs a yoga studio, Studio monk, a small private studio on the 2nd floor of Restaurant monk on Philosopher’s Path in Kyoto.
Imai and his wife have been living a blissful married life for years now and share a son named Ao Imai Joe Imai with his better half. The couple welcomed their child on June 7, 2020, and during that month, he announced via his Instagram handle that he would be prioritizing spending time with his family.
Yoshihiro Imai Net Worth In 2022
Yoshihiro Imai’s net worth is estimated at $1 to $5 million.
The average annual Japanese Chef salary as of September 2022 is $51788, implying that his earnings also might be in a similar range.