SUSHI SO FINE!

Meet former Nobu chef Edwin Sta, whose new restaurant in Pune is what every serious Japanese food lover is talking about

- Lubna Salim

For anyone who cringes at the concept of Indianised Japanese food (read: sushi served with dollops of mayo or a bowl of ramen dowsed with chilli flakes), meet the chef who is unwilling to ‘localise’ for the sake of popularity.

But you wouldn’t expect the chef in question, Edwin Sta or chef Ed as he’s popularly known, to localise his cuisine anyway. After all, he cooked for eight years at Nobu – the world’s most popular Japanese restaurant chain. So across the sushi bar in Ukiyo at The Ritz-Carlton, Pune, you could call for exotic sushi like the hamachi and pineapple salsa with yuzu soy.

INSIDE STORY

How did the 35-year-old chef become a specialist in modern Japanese cuisine? “I started as a sushi chef,” says chef Ed. “Back in the day, it would take five years to start cooking sushi rice, so I was lucky because I learned it for just one year before progressing to the next step.”