SHIGEFUMI TACHIBE

Executive Chef

M Café de Chaya
Chaya Brasserie
Chaya Venice,
Chaya Brasserie San Francisco

Chef Tachibe began training in formal French technique at the age of fifteen at the Hotel Ban Show Row in Nagasaki, Japan. He then served as an exchange chef at the restaurant Gannino in Milan, Italy, at the age of 21. Upon returning to Japan, he was named Executive Chef at La Marée de Chaya in Hayama, Japan. His experience with French and Italian cooking coupled with Japanese cuisine became the fusion that is now synonymous with Chaya Restaurants today.

In 1981, Yuji Tsunoda, whose family has owned restaurants in Japan for over three hundred and ninety years, invited Chef Tachibe to accompany him and his family to Los Angeles to open the acclaimed La Petite Chaya, bringing a new style of “la nouvelle cuisine, which is now referred to as Franco-Japonaise”, to the attention of Angeleno’s. Twenty-seven years later, Chef Tachibe continues to command the menus and kitchens of the three California eateries, including Chaya Brasserie Los Angeles, Chaya Venice, and Chaya Brasserie San Francisco.

Chef Tachibe’s latest undertaking has been creating and overseeing the launch and expansion of M Café de Chaya. This new venture offers a café and deli-style restaurant, featuring contemporary macrobiotic cuisine. Chef Tachibe has been studying macrobiotic cuisine for the last twelve years and is recognized and certified as a Kushi Macrobiotic Chef Premier at the Kushi Institute International. Chef Tachibe feels passionately that this is the most viable healthful lifestyle alternative. As Chef Tachibe had not been able to find a restaurant locally where he could enjoy both the flavorful foods that maintained these high standards and a lively, contemporary ambience, he decided to create it himself. Chef Tachibe had opened the M Café de Chaya on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles in June 2005, and has just opened M Cafe Culver City in May 2008.