Seiji Yamamoto

is a Japanese chef, who holds five Michelin stars at his restaurants, including Nihonryori RyuGin. His restaurant has been named in The World's 50 Best Restaurants, while he has placed fifth in Le Chefs list of the best chefs in the world.

Culinary career Yamamoto's food has been described as a combination of the Japanese Kaiseki with elements of molecular gastronomy, although he does not use those descriptors himself.

At his restaurants, he takes on staff from a variety of cultural backgrounds to allow the things they learn there to be spread to other countries - with this he hopes that Japanese cuisine can continue to evolve. Yamamoto feels that unlike Chinese cuisine, the elements of Japanese food are not well described in other cultures it should be combined with the places it travels to. He compared replicating Japanese food exactly in Hong Kong to producing counterfeit money. He has since expanded his restaurant empire, opening Tenku RyuGin on the 101st floor of International Commerce Centre in Hong Kong from 2012 to 2020, and Shoun RyuGin in Taipei from 2014 to 2022. He aimed to visit the oversea branches four times a year with additional conversations held over Skype. Both overseas branches were awarded two Michelin stars throughout the years.

Awards 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. In June 2022, he was recognized by the International Hospitality Institute on the Global 100 as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Hospitality.