Interview – Chef Kenji Morimoto, Head Chef of “Tsukimi” (Paris)

We spoke with Kenji Morimoto, head chef of Tsukimi, a kaiseki-inspired Japanese restaurant in Paris, about how he sources tableware for his kitchen and why the right piece can change how a dish is perceived. Here’s what he told us.

Can you introduce yourself and your restaurant?
My name is Kenji Morimoto, and I am the head chef of Tsukimi, a Japanese restaurant located in Paris. Our cuisine is inspired by traditional kaiseki, with a strong focus on seasonality, balance, and visual harmony. For us, presentation is as important as taste.

Why is tableware so important in Japanese cuisine?
In Japanese gastronomy, tableware is part of the dish. The plate, the bowl, the texture, and even the weight in the hand influence how the guest experiences the food. A dish served in the wrong bowl can lose half of its meaning. That’s why we are extremely careful when choosing our tableware.

How did you come to work with Akazuki’s wholesale department?
When opening the restaurant, we were looking for authentic Japanese tableware that would suit a professional kitchen in France. Akazuki immediately stood out because they understand both Japanese craftsmanship and the practical needs of restaurants. Their wholesale department made it easy to order consistent collections in larger quantities.

What do you appreciate most about working with Akazuki?
First, the quality and authenticity of the products. The ceramics feel true to Japanese traditions, yet they work perfectly in a modern Parisian restaurant. Second, the guidance: the wholesale team helped us select pieces that matched our menu and explained which items were best suited for intensive restaurant use.

Have you ever had a sourcing experience elsewhere that didn’t work out, and what made the difference with Akazuki?
Before working with Akazuki, we tried importing through a smaller reseller, and the issue was always consistency. We’d order a set of bowls, and the next batch would be slightly different in size or glaze. With Akazuki, what we order is what we get, batch after batch, which matters enormously when you’re trying to keep your tables looking the same every night.

How does the ordering process work for you?
It’s very smooth. We can plan our orders in advance, reorder the same references, and ensure visual consistency across the tables. This is essential for us, especially when replacing or expanding our tableware over time.

Is there a specific piece in your restaurant that guests always comment on?
Our donburi bowls, actually. They’re simple, but the glaze catches the light in a way that makes the dish look more vivid than it would on a plain white plate. It’s a small thing, but guests notice it more than I expected when we first started using them.

Would you recommend Akazuki to other chefs or restaurateurs?
Absolutely. For chefs who care about authenticity, aesthetics, and reliability, Akazuki is a trusted partner. Their wholesale department truly understands what restaurants need, not just from a design point of view, but also from an operational one.

A final word?
Good food deserves the right stage. With Akazuki’s tableware, we feel that our dishes are presented the way they were meant to be seen.

Looking to source the kind of tableware Chef Morimoto relies on? Request our wholesale catalog, or browse our full tableware range.

Why the right dish matters as much as the recipe

Walk into a well-run Japanese restaurant and you’ll notice something before the food even arrives: nothing on the table is generic. Every bowl, plate, and cup was chosen for what it’s about to hold, not picked from a single matching set.

One dish, one designated piece

A traditional Japanese meal arrives as several small dishes rather than one large plate, and each gets its own vessel: rice in a lidded chawan, soup in a shiru-wan, side dishes in a kobachi, and individual portions on a small sara. The variety isn’t decorative, it’s how the meal stays organized on a small table.

Color and shape follow the season

Seasonality shapes the choice of Japanese tableware as much as it shapes the menu. Cool blue or pale ceramics tend to appear in summer settings, while heavier, earth-toned pottery shows up once the weather turns. A restaurant rotating its tableware by season is signaling the same seasonal care a Japanese kitchen applies to its ingredients.

Drinkware gets the same treatment

Sake is served in small ochoko cups, ceramic or wood, and tea in yunomi cups, each shaped for the drink it holds rather than reused across both. It’s a small detail, but it’s one regular customers notice, even if they couldn’t say exactly why the cup felt right.

Chopsticks and their resting place

Chopsticks, or hashi, are placed on a hashi-oki, a small rest, whenever they’re not in use rather than left directly on the table or propped on a plate. It’s a minor piece of tableware that restaurants often forget to budget for, and one that’s easy to add to an order alongside bowls and plates.

Mixing traditional pieces into a non-Japanese menu

You don’t have to run a fully traditional kaiseki menu to use this approach. A lot of the Western restaurants we work with use just two or three pieces, a kobachi for a starter, a donburi for a rice bowl special, an ochoko repurposed as a sake or shot serving cup, to bring a Japanese sensibility into an otherwise Western menu without committing to a full table setting.

A few questions we get from first-time buyers

Do I need a full matching set to get this right? No. Most kitchens build this up gradually, starting with bowls and plates for their two or three signature dishes, then expanding as the menu grows.

What’s the minimum I need to start? A chawan, a kobachi, and a sara cover the vast majority of starter and side dish presentations. Soup bowls and drinkware can come in a second order once the core pieces are in place.

What this means if you’re sourcing for a restaurant

If you’re putting together a Japanese menu, the practical takeaway is this: budget for variety, not just volume. A kitchen that only stocks one bowl size and one plate shape will struggle to present dishes the way customers expect, even if the food itself is excellent. Request our catalog to see the full range of pieces built for this kind of table setting.