Quiet Force

Ryuki Kawasaki is the pioneering Japanese chef who’s reinventing French cuisine at the two-Michelin-star Mezzaluna at Lebua Hotel in Bangkok

- Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle

Seated in the half-moon-shaped Mezzaluna restaurant with an open kitchen, perched sky-high on the top floor of the 65-story Lebua Hotel — the world’s first vertical luxury epicurean destination masterminded by its CEO Deepak Ohri — with dominating views of the expansive Bangkok skyline, chef Ryuki Kawasaki

is the picture of calm and poise. He might display typical Japanese reserve and modesty, but the soft-spoken chef ’s contemporary French food is far from ordinary. Rooted in his Japanese origins, his cuisine is all about high precision, creativity, and simplicity, allowing the natural taste of ingredients to shine through and giving diners an experience that they can only have at Mezzaluna. Choosing to make a name for himself outside of Japan, he upends stereotypes in Asia that Japanese chefs only cook Japanese food. Crafting a truly genre-blurring cuisine that harnesses the best of the cultures of the East and West, he mixes seasonal Japanese ingredients — some little known outside of Japan — and balanced, sophisticated flavors with French cooking techniques to present his interpretation of what European cuisine can be.