Esquire Promotion for Lexus
Third-generation sushi chef Taiji Maruyama is devoting his life to making people feel good
Growing up in Fukushima, Japan, Taiji Maruyama’s childhood was an education in food. His father had a sushi restaurant, and he would spend school holidays at markets, learning what makes good produce. By 10, his passion for cooking had crystallised. His father taught him how to make sushi, and on Sundays, Maruyama would lay on breakfast for the entire family.
Thirty-one years on and Maruyama now has his own sushi restaurant — Maru in London’s Mayfair. Dining here is a lesson in trust: each guest receives a 20-course “omakase” (“I’ll leave it up to the chef ”) tasting menu, which Maruyama and his team serve twice a day.
There are eight seats in the restaurant, around a single wooden table, and every diner receives the same dishes in unison. The menu is constantly evolving, based on whatever ingredients are seasonal and locally available at the time, and served to the table by Maruyama and his team of chefs. In fact, the only decision down to the diner is whether or not to order the sake pairing — which, really, is no decision at all.
Maruyama has been working in kitchens since he left school at 18. After starting out at his father’s restaurant, he worked at a three-Michelin-starred Tokyo restaurant for six years, serving “kaiseki” (a multi-course menu).
“Working in Japan was crazy,” he says. “I’d work from 8am until 12am, with only two days off a month. It was really hard. I’m the last generation to work that crazy.” [Japan has taken steps to end this extreme working culture, with more modern labour laws.]
Moving to London helped Maruyama become a master of his craft. He spent eight years at the perennially en vogue Nobu, where, he says, he “learned what people like”. His next move was something of a risky one — to “the middle of nowhere” in Surrey, to open a Japanese dining room in the Grade II listed Beaverbrook hotel.
“Suppliers didn’t want to bring ingredients out that far,” he reflects. Maruyama had to convince fishmongers to make the journey to Leatherhead with their finest stock – his decades of experience, by this point, meant he could spot second-rate fare a mile off.
I ask Maruyama if he connects with the concept of “takumi” (a master craftsperson
