“The food that I cook is not straight-forward Japanese cuisine,” declares Chef Shota Nakajima. For example, Taku, his Seattle restaurant, is a late-night destination that puts karaage in the spotlight. But he pairs the Japanese fried chicken with dipping sauces that are conceptually non-Japanese, while carrying the hallmarks of the Japanese flavor pantry. Yuzu Ketchup, Yum Yum Sauce, Spicy Teriyaki and Nori Ranch are among the options. Snacks and sides at Taku reflect a similar hybrid approach, ranging from Furikake Fries to Japanese Mac Salad (elbow macaroni, kewpie mayo, ham, apple, cucumber and red onion) to Fried Chili Tofu. But one consistent through line in most of Nakajima’s dishes is soy sauce: “Whatever cuisine I go into, the dish turns a little Japanese, and I finish it with Kikkoman^® Soy Sauce, just because it’s my way of cooking.”

Photo Credit: Austin Quach

  Shota Nakajima

The Japanese-American chef is a three-time James Beard Rising Star award semi-finalist and a fierce competitor on such TV cooking showdowns as “Top Chef,” “Iron Chef Gauntlet,” “Beat Bobby Flay,” “Bobby’s Triple Threat” and “Tournament of Champions.” He is also a member of the Kikkoman Kitchen Cabinet, the company’s inner circle of culinary advisors who collaborate on foodservice recipe development, product ideation, industry outreach and much more.

Born in Japan but raised in Seattle, Nakajima moved to Osaka at age 18 to learn the art of Japanese cuisine, working with Michelin Star-rated Chef Yasuhiko Sakamoto, before returning to Seattle to apply his training with his own unique spin. In this conversation with Flavor & The Menu, Chef Shota defines his philosophy and approach to cooking, honoring the different influences that continue to shape his culinary craft.

Flavor & The Menu: Tell us a little about what you learned about building flavors when you trained in Japan.
Chef Shota Nakajima: It’s very logical and based primarily on balancing three flavor fundamentals: umami, sodium and sweetness. It’s all about ratios. The basis of how you learn Japanese cooking when they teach you in Japan is 5-1-1 for this dish, 12-1-1 for that one and so on. The chef I trained with explained that every chef has a different definition of the 1:1 and that a student’s initial job was to learn that and get so consistent with it, you can hit that 1:1 no matter how long the service and how blown out your palate feels at the end of the night. It’s like shooting hoops, over and over and over.

F&TM: How did you adapt what you learned there for your restaurants here?
Shota: I do different kinds of service from restaurants to pop-ups to private dinners, and what I do is not straight-forward Japanese, but the core of it is. I had a Japanese restaurant called Adana, where we changed our multi-course menu every day. What a hard restaurant—but I did it for seven years! I never hired a Japanese chef; I always hired chefs with different backgrounds. And although the menu changed every day, they always had to “Shota-fy” everything. What that means was that each dish had to have rice vinegar, a pickling ratio, a finish with soy sauce—and that really turned into my cuisine. I found my style over those seven years. I’m going to interpret other cuisines, but the way I cook, the core of it is still very Japanese and I tend to finish everything off with soy sauce, because that’s what I do. Today, at Taku, we’re buying Kikkoman^® Soy Sauce by the truckload.

In Japan, most chefs train for 10 to 15 years, and when they go on to open a restaurant, it’s unbelievably delicious, but it’s very reflective of and similar to those training years. I came back to Seattle after five years of core training, which gave me a little more flexibility to go my own way. I surrounded myself with chefs who were as talented as me in different cuisines, which gave me the opportunity to grow and learn. Learning how to utilize butter, how to extract oil from ingredients, how to reduce double cream—all of that I learned from these chefs who were as curious as me, going together to other restaurants, eating, learning, saying, “This is cool, let’s try to incorporate this into what we’re doing.” Years of learning and curiosity really cultivated what I do.

F&TM: In addition to your restaurants, you developed a series of how-to YouTube videos, sharing a wide variety of recipes and techniques, from preparing Japanese Curry and Sesame Mochi to using cheddar five ways in Cheese Manjyu.
Shota: I want to get back into that. I love to share cooking knowledge. One idea I have is to talk about all the ways to use soy sauce. One of my favorite ways is charring. You don’t even have to hit the ingredient with it. Say you’re grilling fish over charcoal. You literally dump soy sauce right on the charcoal and put a lid over the fish so it captures that nice aroma.

Soy sauce is so much more than adding sodium, and that’s particularly true of the unmatched quality and flavor of Kikkoman^® Soy Sauce, which really shines when you explore these different techniques. When I make fried rice, for example, and when the ingredients over the hottest part of the stovetop start smoking, I hit my soy sauce right there, producing a nutty aroma. And right before it burns, I’ll scoop the sauté pan and flip the soy sauce into the dish so it gets that flavor profile. Fat absorbs aroma, so that’s why this soy sauce technique works with the protein on the grill or the rice that’s surrounded by the fat it’s being sautéed in. Simple, but yummy.

F&TM: For enterprising operators that want to introduce more Japanese-influenced menu items, what flavors or ingredients do you think are the most approachable and accessible to mainstream America?
Shota: Soy sauce and teriyaki sauce. Teriyaki sauce itself is almost at that 1:1 balance of sweetness and savoriness without the sodium. You can use both in braises, pizzas, burgers. And then barbecue sauce and soy sauce is a great combination. You can also add soy sauce to brines—it does burn, so be careful about how much you put in, but it’s delicious in brines that aren’t used on massive proteins; go a little smaller.

Get a crockpot and put in your favorite stew meats, maybe pork belly or beef, and vegetables. Add your stock and teriyaki sauce—and I’d personally add a little soy sauce, because my 1:1 ratio is a little more salty than sweet—and let it cook down. People don’t think of teriyaki sauce for a braise base, but it comes out great.

Beyond soy sauce and teriyaki? Yuzu is a wonderful flavor. A lot of people are becoming familiar with it nationwide. It’s a one-of-a-kind flavor between grapefruit and lemon. Dressings are a great way to go with yuzu. I also use it in pickling liquids and anything that uses lemon or lime. I just used it in a pico de gallo. Yuzu is a good replacement for any acid.

Sauces, including Chef Shota’s signature recipe, featuring Kikkoman^® Soy Sauce, deliver the crave factor for the most popular karaage chicken dishes at late-night destination Taku in Seattle. These include the Spicy Chicken Sando (left) and the F*ck It Bucket (right), which boasts two pounds of nuggets and a pound of furikake fries.

F&TM: As you consider what’s next, how do you see yourself continuing to introduce American diners to Japanese-influenced dishes?
Shota: At Taku, we have these sandwiches that are based off karaage. The chicken is karaage, but the sauce that it is tossed in is made from a bunch of different ingredients, starting with my own teriyaki sauce, which uses Kikkoman^® Soy Sauce for that extra burst of umami. It’s spicy, it’s tangy, it’s got acid, it’s got sweetness, it’s got sharp soy sauce flavor, it’s got richness. We call it the Shota Sauce, and it’s quite delightful.

Although sauces are not used the same way in Japan, I’m in Seattle; I’m in America, and there are people here who love sauces. There are certain things that hospitality should prioritize. If people enjoy that, I want to deliver that above all.

Right now, we’re looking ahead to fall and testing some ramen dishes for Taku’s menu. Fried chicken is great, but when it gets cold in Seattle, I personally want soup and noodles.

F&TM: To wrap up, what are three of your favorite ingredients or flavors to eat and/or cook with?
Shota: I am a sucker for green Sichuan peppercorns, especially in braises. I’m a big forager, and one of my favorite recipes is getting a bunch of mushrooms, chopping them up, putting them in teriyaki, adding the green Sichuan peppercorns and kombu and then steeping and braising it all the way down until it turns into this pickled thing that I jar and give to friends. It’s like the mushrooms you get in sushi rolls.

Rice would be the second. Rice is life. Rice is my main thing—it’s just one of my favorite ingredients. And the third? Bonito flakes. There’s a Japanese technique you do at the very end of braises, adding bonito flakes to a cheese ball or something similar. You add it, bring it to boil and it gives that rich aroma of bonito in your face. Maybe you go to a soba or an udon spot and you think, “Wow, this dashi has a lot of bonito flavoring in it.” That fresh finish? That’s how you do that technique. I’m such a fan I use that technique in different cuisines.

To learn more about the Kikkoman Foodservice portfolio of sauces and flavors used in Japanese-adjacent cuisines, visit https://kikkomanusa.com/foodservice.