A native to Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan, Chef Noriyuki Sugies entry into cooking was serendipitous. A budding musician at the age of fifteen, he took a job in Tokyo at a California-style restaurant in order to support his passion as a guitar player in a rock band heavily influenced by American and British music.
Upon completing high school, he entered Japans prestigious Tsuji Culinary School in Osaka. Sugie soon discovered he was as fervent about cooking as he was about music. He found many similarities between the two: all about harmony. Orchestrating a meal is like creating an unforgettable score. Presentation is like a mesmerizing solo. Like any performance, you have to put on a good show.
In the beginning Sugie was also strongly influenced by traditional Japanese cooking, as well as frequent forays with his family into fine dining establishments that offered Chinese, Japanese, French, and Euro-Western cuisine. He recalled that dining in Tokyo had a sense of occasiongetting dressed up, seeing and being seenand the food presentation was pure theater.
Sugie melded his traditional Asian-style technique with classic French training, while furthering his studies at Tsuji Culinary School in Château de L'Eclair, France. He perfected his French culinary skills and knowledge of French wines over a five-year period while working at three Michelin-starred restaurants in Bordeaux, the three-starred LAubergade, the one-starred Le Moulin de Martorey, and the two-starred Hostellerie du Vieux.
In 1996, Sugies culinary curiosity was piqued by the arrival of American cuisine to the forefront of the global culinary pantheon, thus inspiring the next destination on his culinary odyssey: the world-famous Charlie Trotters in Chicago. There he served as chef de partie. After two years, Sugie was ready for a new adventure and headed to Sydney, Australia, to work at one of the citys top establishments, Tetsuyas, as sous-chef. During his two-year tenure, Tetsuyas was named Restaurant of the Year, twice, by the widely read Sydney Morning Herald.
Over a ten-year period, Sugies culinary scope continued to evolve, and he grew eager to venture beyond the kitchen. Opening Restaurant VII in Sydney, as chef and partner, exposed him to restaurant management, and provided a stage to showcase a culmination of his culinary talent with complete artistic control. Restaurant VII, with its amazingly intricate, sumptuous French-Japanese cuisine and theater-like service, brought Sugie rave reviews, celebrity status, and capacity crowds. Shortly after opening, the establishment was named Best New Restaurant by the Sydney Morning Herald.
After the success at Restaurant VII, Sugie continued to satiate admiring food enthusiasts while participating in Mandarin Oriental Hotel Groups guest chef program, where he cooked numerous promotional dinners at the Bangkok, Hong Kong, London, and Bermuda properties. After a world wide search, Sugie was selected by Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group as chef de cuisine for Asiate, the ninety-seat signature restaurant located on the thirty-fifth floor sky lobby of Mandarin Oriental, New York.
Sugies approach for Asiate was artistic and modern, yet elegant and subtle. His eclectic dishes captured the elements of French and Japanese cuisine, and his presentation style reflected the harmony inherent to every aspect of the hotel. After four years at Asiate, where Sugie earned numerous praises and marvelous reviews, the success led him to contemplate starting up his own venture to spread his creative works even further in the global scene. He is working on various projects under the unique brand of IRONNORI, which is IRON + NORI with IRON being the backward spelling of NORI.