Personalities

Yuko Kajino

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Chef - CHAYA Brasserie

Yuko Kajino Executive Chef, CHAYA | San Francisco

As a chef who has worked for the family owned CHAYA restaurant group for over the last 10 years, and currently at CHAYA San Francisco, Executive Chef Yuko Kajino brings not only a deft hand to creating inspired cuisine, but also an intimate knowledge of the kitchen, dining room, and its guests. As a teenager in Nagoya, Japan, he was first inspired to consider a culinary career while watching television. “I was 15 and was watching a TV show that featured all this delicious-looking food,” he says of the epiphany. “I’d never seen anything like it in my life, and all I could think was that I wanted to eat that kind of food.”

Deciding he not only wanted to eat the food, but also create it, Kajino moved to Tokyo as a teenager and attended Tuji Culinary School while working as a waiter. In 1998, he went to work at La Marée de CHAYA in Hayama, where he worked in pastry and as a line cook, quickly developing his skills in the kitchen. After only two years he relocated to San Francisco to take a position as a line cook at CHAYA Brasserie San Francisco, working his way up to chef de cuisine over the next nine years. In 2009, he moved to Los Angeles to work as executive chef at CHAYA Brasserie Beverly Hills, the company’s flagship location in the United States, before returning to the Bay Area in late 2010 in his current role. As executive chef at CHAYA Brasserie San Francisco, Kajino oversees all aspects of menu development, creating Euro Asian cuisine that he calls “simple, perfectly seasoned, and a little surprising.” In addition to ensuring all guests at the restaurant have a memorable experience, Kajino also manages the kitchen staff, which is an equally satisfying part of his role at the restaurant. “I enjoy teaching people new ways and new foods to cook as much I like meeting new people and seeing others enjoy my food,” he notes.