Hiroyuki Sakai is known as ‘The Delacroix of French Cuisine’ and he is a chef who specializes in French cuisine.
Hiroyuki Sakai was born on April 2, 1942 in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan.
In 1959 at the age of 17, he started working in Osaka at a restaurant in the Shin Osaka Hotel.
At 19 he travelled alone to Perth, Australia, to build his skills at the Hotel Oriental. After a year and a half in Australia he returned to Japan, spending three years studying at Ginza Shiki with the late Fujio Shito. Shito was his predecessor as the leader of French cooking in Japan.
He later worked as a chef at the restaurants Coco Palms in Aoyama and John Kanaya in Roppongi.
He is known for his winning record in the popular Japanese television program Iron Chef where he started in 1994 as "Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai".
His stature as the top chef on the show was formalized when he was named the ‘King of Iron Chefs’ after emerging victorious from the show's grand finale, a tournament involving all the active Iron Chefs.
Outside of Iron Chef, Sakai is the owner and head chef of the restaurant La Rochelle, originally in Aoyama but now in Shibuya. The restaurant was named after La Rochelle, a city in France where Sakai had spent some time as an apprentice.
