Chef Mitsuharu Tsumura is Still Hungry at No 1

MITSUHARU ‘MICHA’ TSUMURA HAD barely been in Mumbai for a few hours when we met, having arrived from Peru that very morning, but there was little evidence of a man who had just endured a long-haul flight. By 11am, he had already been to the gym. Then came a hectic welcome lunch, a quick reset and preparations for the twonight dinner that would mark Maido’s first Indian appearance at The St Regis Mumbai, as part of Masters of Marriott Bonvoy and Culinary Culture, in association with American Express. Most people would have been negotiating jet lag; Tsumura appeared to have negotiated with it and come out on top.

It was perhaps the most revealing introduction to a chef who, even after taking Maido to the summit of global gastronomy, seemed constitutionally incapable of standing still.

In June 2025, Maido was named No 1 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. For most chefs, the distinction might have represented a moment to pause, savour the achievement, perhaps even breathe. For Tsumura, it did the opposite. “Some people thought, okay, so we made it, and we’re going to take it easy,” he says. But his team is “more motivated than ever.”

Barely had the announcement settled, than Tsumura and his team opened the Maido Hub, a research-and-development space just 20 metres from the Lima restaurant. It was designed as a place where ideas could be pulled apart, rebuilt and pushed into stranger territory, and was intended as “a hub of connections, a place to bring people together and share what they are creating.”

For Tsumura, becoming No 1 was never the end goal. “Of course, it is important and a way of making a dream come true,” he says. “But it’s also a way of saying we’re going to be able to do whatever we want.”

That meant pushing beyond the familiar, testing new formats and refusing to let Maido become imprisoned by its own success. Nikkei itself was a useful lens through which to understand that philosophy. Before Maido, Tsumura says, restaurants tended to be classified as either Japanese or Peruvian. But in his worldview, cuisines are rarely as neatly compartmentalised as menus and restaurant categories suggest. In 2014, he co-wrote Nikkei Es Perú, documenting how the cuisine came to exist and speaking to many of its early pioneers. His thinking was that Nikkei needed a point of reference: a way of explaining not merely what was on the plate, but why it existed. “At that time, Nikkei was not that popular or recognised,” he says. “So I thought, let’s first start from the beginning.

“Nikkei doesn’t mean the melding of Japanese and Peruvian flavours. It could be anywhere in the world,” he says. Fundamentally, it is about Japanese heritage travelling, taking root and evolving somewhere else. “You can have Nikkei in India,” he says.

Across the two-night collaboration in India, Tsumura’s menu offered diners a taste of that Peruvian Japanese imagination: Peje-Rey, silverside fish in two textures with nori tsukudani and ponzu; Butifarra, smoked paiche ham with ají dulce, melipona honey and karashi; Cebiche, with pistachio cream, bivalves and leche de tigre; and Toro Tartar, pairing fatty tuna belly with avocado, sushi rice and sea urchin cream. The menu moved into Sudado, grilled black cod with clams and a rich sudado reduction, and Baby Lamb, a northern-style stew with coriander, bean foam and loche cracker. A delight to anyone with a pulse and a penchant for the deliciously unexpected.

When asked whether Nikkei could evolve without losing its authenticity, Tsumura seemed amused by the premise. “Of course. It has to,” he says. “Japanese food changes when it travels to the United States; it changes when it reaches Peru. The same thing will happen in India.” Nikkei, he believes, would “keep its essence of Peruvian Japanese, but it will adapt to local flavours.”

His analogy was wonderfully simple: look at Indian food itself. Beneath what we call a single cuisine is a sprawling history of ingredients, techniques, migrations and influences. Peru, he argued, was no different. Nikkei was simply one particularly vivid expression of that exchange. Then came the line that could almost function as his culinary manifesto: “Tradition wouldn’t exist or wouldn’t be able to exist without innovation and vice versa.” It was difficult not to hear that as a description of his own career. And if evolution was the natural order of food, Tsumura was clearly intent on keeping his own culinary orbit in constant motion.

Maido may have been No 1, but Tsumura was already thinking about Tori, his woodfired chicken concept; sauces that could take Peruvian flavours into people’s homes; ways to make his cuisine more accessible; and new restaurants, countries and formats. “How can I reach more people?” he asked. With an average check of around $7, it was deliberately democratic: rotisserie chicken, wood fire and Peruvian sauces. “Who doesn’t eat chicken?” he asked, laughing. “That’s the question.” The sauces took five years to develop to the point where they could be exported without refrigeration, allowing flavours such as ají de gallina, papa a la huancaína and tiradito to travel beyond the restaurant.

The ambition, then, is not merely to make the world’s best restaurant. It is to make Peruvian food harder to ignore.

Yet beneath all that expansion and experimentation is something surprisingly private: an almost forensic habit of self-evaluation. Every night, before bed, Tsumura said he analyses his entire day. Not just the dishes, but how he handled an issue or whether he could have done something differently. The downside, he admits, is that the brain does not always know when to clock off. His fiancée, Mariana, occasionally has to intervene. “Stop. Click the off button now,” she tells him. His response? “How can I control this? My brain, my mind, I cannot control it.”

However, ask him what he would do with a day with absolutely nothing to do, and his answer is unexpectedly uncomplicated. “The beach, for sure. Just the ocean, perhaps a drink, and fishing.”

At home, too, his cooking is gloriously unceremonious. A quick pasta. Marinated chicken with potatoes and vegetables. A ham and cheese sandwich. “I don’t put so much effort into cooking [for myself],” he says. The ‘serious’ cooking, he suggests, is for other people.

What he really loves is a barbecue, the long, languorous kind that takes over an entire afternoon. He lights the charcoal, gathers friends and family, pours drinks and feeds everyone “in small bites.” Four hours becomes six. “I can spend the whole afternoon just throwing things in the grill,” he says with excitement. It is perhaps the most perfect ending to the portrait: the chef who has conquered the highest reaches of fine dining ultimately wanting little more than fire, food, friends and the sea.