March 3, 2025
YAMAGATA – Yoshoku, a genre of Japanese cuisine based on Western dishes, is taking new steps in its roundabout evolution at Sumire, a restaurant in Tendo, Yamagata Prefecture, whose chef infuses the familiar meals with French elements and techniques.
Hidefumi Komatsu, 51, is a trained French chef who takes three days to make his demi-glace sauce with fond de veau. He has a penchant for flambe, the dramatic French cooking method in which alcohol is poured over food and lit on fire.
His yoshoku eatery Sumire was originally the French restaurant Chez Bon. Komatsu made the switch in November 2023. After the COVID-19 pandemic, he aimed to change his traditional high-end French cuisine to “food that will attract more people, from children to adults.”
His “Shiawase no Napoburg” (¥1,760) is a hamburger steak on a bed of Napolitan spaghetti. The pasta portion of the dish is a classic yoshoku item — spaghetti with a sauce based on tomato ketchup. The combination certainly satisfies people, as hamburger steak and Napolitan spaghetti are long-established favorites in Japan.
Komatsu’s refreshing version of the sauce gives a sense of fresh tomatoes. Honey is added as a secret ingredient for a subtle, gentle sweetness. The fresh, chewy pasta goes well with sausage, mushrooms and other standard Napolitan ingredients.
Komatsu’s hamburger steak is made from 100% Yamagata beef with pureed onion. After both sides are browned in a frying pan over high heat, the steak is slowly heated in a 180 C oven for about 12 minutes. Abundant juice will flow from the steak when you put a knife into it.
You may think the combination of steak and spaghetti would be heavy on your stomach, but the flavor of Komatsu’s cuisine is refined, and you can easily eat it all the way through.
You can also see French culinary techniques in his other dishes. For example, the diced chicken used in the rice omelet, a dish of fried rice draped in a sheet of cooked egg, is made confit-style, slowly cooked in low-temperature oil.
However, his restaurant is not pretentious. “I want people to feel free to come to my restaurant as if it were a ramen or soba noodle shop,” he said.
Komatsu is originally from Yamagata City. He decided to be a chef of French cuisine when he was in the fourth grade of elementary school, after watching a TV program featuring Nobuo Murakami (1921-2005), the first executive chef of the Imperial Hotel. After graduating from university, Komatsu trained at French restaurants in the Tokyo metropolitan area. He then returned to his hometown and opened his own restaurant in 2004.
When he had to change the restaurant’s business format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he had trouble creating a yoshoku menu, which he had never tried before. He remembered the tastes he had enjoyed as a child at yoshoku restaurants: Rice omelet, Napolitan spaghetti and hamburger steak. At first, there were only six items on his menu, but the number has increased to about 30 with the addition of his own creations.
Before the pandemic, he had been eager to offer authentic French cuisine in Yamagata, but he has started to think more from the customers’ point of view to see what kind of dishes would please them. Yoshoku restaurants tend to be more frequented than expensive French restaurants, so he often changes dishes on his menu so that customers do not get bored.
It is difficult to bring children to a full-fledged French restaurant. However, friends of his young daughter enjoy being taken to his restaurant by their parents. He saw his guests dig into their lunch with smiles on their faces and said, “I guess I made a good decision.”