Florilège

Tokyo

Creative French-Japanese cooking with sustainability on display

On the Pass

Hiroyasu Kawate

Pastry Chef

Okushima Yuya

Ringside seats: At Florilège, chef Hiroyasu Kawate serves his creative tasting menus of contemporary French-accented cuisine in a spacious, theatrical setting. The plush counter seating running three sides of the expansive open kitchen allows guests to watch their dishes being prepared, while also interacting directly with the front and back of house teams throughout the meal.

Cooking in his DNA: Kawate comes from a family of chefs: as a child, he never had any doubt that he wanted to follow the same path. After working at Le Jardin des Sens in Montpellier, France, for a year, he returned to Tokyo in 2007 as sous chef at Quintessence under chef Shuzo Kishida. He opened Florilège in 2009, won two Michelin stars in 2018 and five years later, was voted by his peers as the recipient of the Inedit Damm Chefs' Choice Award 2023. In the autumn of the same year, the restaurant was relocated to the ultra-modern Azabudai Hills, the tallest building in Tokyo.

Sustainability on the menu: Kawate has a passion for sustainability. Wherever possible he uses locally sourced ingredients, imbuing his menus with a distinctive Japanese character. Nowadays, Kawate and his team are committed to serving less meat and seafood and more vegetables, reflected in the plant-forward tasting menus. Modest names such as eggplant, mushroom or soybean flan will surprise guests with complex and deep flavours.

Offshoots and side projects: In February 2021, Florilège pastry chef Miho Horio opened her own dedicated dessert counter, Azuki to Kouri (red beans to ice), specialising in next-level kakigori (shaved ice) creations. Meanwhile, Denkushiflori, Kawate’s joint venture with his longtime friend (and fishing buddy), chef Zaiyu Hasegawa from Den, is also thriving.