| “If you talk to Makoto, tell him to call home,”
laughs Sadao Ohno, Winnipeg’s master sushi chef. Makoto Ono, his culinary
boy wonder of a son, currently bounces between Hong Kong and Beijing, where he
is in the process of opening a Japanese restaurant—just months after he
won the 2007 Canadian culinary championship and just weeks after hanging up his
chef’s apron at Gluttons, the bijou bistro/gourmet store in Winnipeg where
he made his name.
Sadao and his wife, Sachiko, are sitting in a booth at Edohei, their downtown
Winnipeg restaurant, wearing the mock-exasperation of parents anxious for a call
home from a wayward kid.
With his spiked mullet, penchant for comic books, and skulk-like walk, the
29-year-old top chef could pass for a teenager. Makoto Ono earned gloating rights
by winning Canada’s 2007 Gold Medal Plates competition in Whistler. (Another
young Western Canadian chef, Melissa Craig of Whistler’s Bearfoot Bistro,
recently won the 2008 competition in Toronto.) But “gloating” isn’t
a word you would ever use in the same sentence as Makoto Ono’s name. Modesty,
duty and a constant need to learn seem to be his key character traits. In fact,
they are written all over him: on his left forearm, Ono wears a tattoo with the
Japanese symbols for “truth” and “honesty.” On his right
arm, one that represents his father’s family crest as well as his name,
Makoto. There’s a star symbol on his back, a koi on his right shoulder.
These days all his values and virtues are put to the test, with his time filled
with devising menus and decor, dealing with zoning laws and hiring staff in a
city where he doesn’t speak the language and where reception to Japanese
food is pretty chilly. “After Gluttons, I could have opened a restaurant
in Toronto. But the opportunity to open a restaurant in China right before the
Olympics? I’ll never get that again.” He explains that the decor of
his new restaurant will have “elements of mystery and show, which plays
off the food, because what may sound simple on the menu may look and taste like
more than what you expect.”
That sense of surprise and delight is important to understanding Ono’s
understated but richly layered food. He tells me about some of the indulgences
he is working on: “A scallop sashimi—I like the texture—with
black truffle vinaigrette, maybe garnished with asparagus ribbons.” He is
concentrating on salty, spicy flavours, much like the salty-sweet tour de force,
a black olive “candy” accompaniment that helped him win his championship.
His food philosophy remains unchanged: “I like each component to be able
to stand on its own.”
Bold and Spicy
Ono’s character is, similar to his cuisine, full of unexpected pairings:
like sense of duty with gutsy spontaneity. Winnipeggers were just discovering
Ono’s talents when he became Canada’s culinary champ. His cuisine
was full of pure and concentrated flavours, free of the excessive ingredient crutches
that make for encyclopedic descriptions on a menu. As a onetime fine art student
he placed much emphasis on the visual aspects of his dishes, which often looked
like works of modern art. Winnipeg Free Press restaurant critic Marion Warhaft
called Ono “not just supremely gifted but genuinely creative as well.”
Ono made it to the Gold Medal Plates after winning the Winnipeg round with
a dish that showcased the humble beet. He describes the national round as “Iron
Chef-meets-Hell’s Kitchen.” Three culinary teams were crammed into
a small kitchen, trying to get at the six-burner stove. With the cameras, microphones,
guests and judges also squeezed into the space, there was barely enough room for
some of the egos. Not only Ono’s cooking but his ingenuity and integrity
won the day. Given $300 to spend on one challenge, Ono spent less than $100—and
donated the rest of the money back to the Special Olympics. During the “black
box” competition, Ono’s team was the only one to follow all the rules
regarding the mystery ingredients and time limit. Momentum had started to grow
for the underdog kid from Winnipeg by the fi nal round, where he created a tuna
triple-header that won the day. “When they announced the third and second
place winners, I felt like I should have tried harder,” Ono says. “Then
they announced the winner. I almost collapsed, my knees were shaking so much.
Some of these chefs were like heros to me.”
“Cooking was instant and direct satisfaction.
You can make paintings, but unless you’re at the gallery with viewers, it
isn’t as gratifying.”
After he won, Gluttons was getting calls from travellers “saying ‘I’m
on my way from Toronto or Calgary,’” Ono says. Local foodies beamed
but also sat on the edge of their bistro seats wondering if he would leave Winnipeg.
Then it happened: while at a dinner at Toronto food critic James Chatto’s
home, Ono met Annie Kwok of the Canadian Hong Kong Commerce Association. She asked
him to fl y to Hong Kong to meet her son, a restaurateur. “I thought I was
just going to test the waters,” says Ono. Next thing he knew he was opening
a restaurant in Beijing.
The Road to Beijing
The need to challenge himself was instilled by his parents, who opened Edohei
in 1988. “Very scary ” Sadao recalls, “introducing Winnipeg
to raw fish.”
Makoto’s was a traditional upbringing; he practiced Japanese calligraphy
and packed rice balls for his school lunch. Still, seeing the toil it took on
his parents, he was determined not to enter the restaurant business. “I
wanted to pursue a career in comic book art. I also wanted to travel to Japan
to study taiko (Japanese drumming) with the masters.”
He entered the fi ne arts program at the University of Manitoba, but when
his parents opened Edohei, he wanted to help: washing dishes, busing tables. One
night the sushi chef didn’t show up and Makoto found himself centre stage
at the sushi bar. “I was hooked,” he says. “It was instant and
direct satisfaction. You can make paintings, but unless you’re at the gallery
with viewers, it isn’t as gratifying.”
He left university and enrolled at Dubrulle’s Culinary Arts program
in Vancouver, specializing in French cuisine. He saw parallels with Japanese cuisine
there in the importance of fresh ingredients and visual appeal. Jobs with West
in Vancouver and La Vieille Gare in Winnipeg followed, then a stint in Europe
to eat “memorable meals.”
On his fi rst day in London he landed jobs at two of London’s best restaurants:
Mirabelle and Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Franco-Thai restaurant Vong. He
once even cooked a meal for Jamie Oliver. Ono learned about character-building
and kitchen organization in this high-pressure world of culinary excellence. “Chefs
would call you a wanker, throw the food at you, try to burn you if you weren’t
moving fast enough. Everything you see on [reality] TV happens.”
Back in Winnipeg, he catered private dinners and worked at Edohei, where he
added a few French-inspired Japanese dishes to the menu. He was approached by
Winnipeg entrepreneur Jameson Watermulder with the idea of fronting a bistro/gourmet
food shop, the concept that became Gluttons.
Winnipeg via Japan
Now on a world stage, Ono’s French-accented Japanese cooking is, in a way,
the reverse of the Japanese-infl ected French cuisine at Gluttons. Ono’s
new investors are banking on the fact that as the world starts to look to Beijing,
so too will Beijing open its senses to inventive international cuisine.
But you still have to wonder about a chef with a predilection for fi sh working
in landlocked, meat-centric Beijing. “They are not big fans of Japanese
cuisine,” Ono admits. “The substance and the portion sizes are confusing
to them; it’s too light and too subtle. Beijing is near North Korea and
they favour the more spicy fl avours of Korean food.” But he takes comfort
in the early obstacles his father overcame in opening Edohei in Winnipeg.
All those lessons fuse to form his cooking philosophy—but don’t
ever use the f-word to describe it. “I hate the term ‘fusion.’
It’s confusing. It’s basically whatever inspiration I get from the
ingredients, the season, executing it through western or Chinese ingredients,”
Ono says. “I call it personal cuisine: a combination of everything I have
learned from my parents, cooking school and working in London.”
“Mostly from us,” his parents tell me later, laughing around the
table at Edohei, where son Makoto fi rst demonstrated his culinary precociousness.
Who would have guessed that the path from their hometown of Ibaraki to Winnipeg
to Beijing would be so fast or direct? Turn the page for recipes. “Cooking
was instant and direct satisfaction. You can make paintings, but unless you’re
at the gallery with viewers, it isn’t as gratifying.” |
