Seiji Yamamoto

He was personally described by Time Out Tokyo as one of 50 reasons why Tokyo was the greatest city in the world. In 2016, French magazine Le Chef named Yamamoto the fifth best chef in the world, the highest placed non-European in the list.

His signature dish is a hamo eel soup. Rather than adopt the traditional knife techniques of his fellow Japanese chefs to remove the bones from the fish, he instead had one undergo a CT scan to exactly map out the bone structure to allow him to carve it with ease. This dish is routinely on the tasting menus at his restaurants. This was originally to prepare for a cooking demonstration in 2005.

He opened his Tokyo based restaurant, Nihonryori RyuGin, in 2003. It is popular among western travellers, and is routinely visited by chefs of Michelin star restaurants. In 2016, it placed 31st in Restaurant magazine's list of The World's 50 Best Restaurants. It has been named fifth in Asia's Best Restaurants, and holds three stars in the Michelin Guide. He has since expanded his restaurant empire, opening Tonku RyuGin in Hong Kong in 2012, and Shoun RyuGin in Taipei in 2014. His Hong Kong based restaurant also holds two Michelin stars; he aims to visit it four times a year with additional conversations held over Skype.

Seiji Yamamoto (山本征治 , Yamamoto Seiji, born 1970) is a Japanese chef, who holds three Michelin stars at his restaurant Nihonryori RyuGin. His restaurant has been named in The World's 50 Best Restaurants, while he has placed fifth in Le Chef' s list of the best chefs in the world.