Five years after opening Yoshino in New York, Tadashi “Edowan” Yoshida is thinking about reaching ten. The chef has earned a Michelin star and four stars from The New York Times, but his plans for the restaurant still begin with the work of a single day.
“So it’s a really simple philosophy that I have, and it’s basically that today will be better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better than today,” he says through a translator.
His words describe the thinking behind kaizen, the Japanese concept of continuous improvement. At Yoshino, that means continuing to learn and refine his craft, even after decades of cooking. He sees small discoveries as part of his responsibility to the people sitting across his counter.
“And personally, as a craftsman, I’ll never be 100 percent,” he says. “I feel like I discover something new every day, big or small, and every single day I want to grow in some capacity, even if it’s just a tiny bit of growth.”
Yoshida has repeatedly sought places where he could develop. Raised in a restaurant family in Gifu Prefecture, he trained in Tokyo before returning to work alongside his parents. He later moved to Nagoya, where Sushi no Yoshino earned Tabelog Gold awards in 2017 and 2018. He closed the acclaimed restaurant to take on New York.
“I left Gifu for Nagoya because I wanted to challenge myself,” he says. “I really want a lifelong series of challenging myself.”
The New York opening took three years. Pandemic delays nearly exhausted his finances before Yoshino debuted in 2021. In its small dining room, ten guests sit at a hinoki cypress counter fashioned from a 300-year-old tree. The restaurant’s name honors his father’s birthplace in Nara Prefecture.
