My Town Inagi 2023 Mr. Kazuki Hamabe
Updated: February 26, 2023
Won the gold medal (Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Award) in the appetizer section of the 14th Young Chef Chinese Cooking Competition!
Kazuki Hamabe
Mr. Kazuki Hamabe (35 years old), who lives in Hirao and is a chef at Akasaka Sichuan Hotel, participated in the 14th Youth Chef Chinese Cooking Competition held in November last year and won the gold prize in the appetizer category (Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare). award). The Young Chef Chinese Cooking Competition is held once every two years with the aim of improving Chinese cooking techniques, nurturing successors, and promoting and popularizing Chinese cuisine. (appetizers, hot dishes/seafood, hot dishes/livestock, desserts, set meals) will compete for the best cooking skills in Japan.
Hamabe's work
Representing the phoenix with about 50 kinds of ingredients
Mr. Hamabe participated in the appetizer division, and the assignment was to make an appetizer in the shape of a phoenix called Phoenix Pinban, and to make a plate with three kinds of appetizers. When creating the phoenix pin board, Mr. Hamabe imagined a scene of two phoenixes living quietly while raising their children in a remote mountainous area. A work that beautifully expresses this with about 50 kinds of ingredients is "Shinden Phoenix" (Japanese translation: Chinese phoenix serving God). The most difficult part of this work was the wings of the phoenix, and it seems that the most difficult task was to cut the ingredients into a thickness of only 1 mm and arrange them. In the final of this competition, you have to complete 1 plate of phoenix pin board and 7 plates with 3 types of appetizers in 120 minutes. Even under these severe conditions, Mr. Hamabe demonstrated his skills and won the Gold Award (Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Award). At the age of 22, Mr. Hamabe won the gold medal (Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Award) in the hot vegetable and poultry division of the same competition. Only a few people have achieved two crowns so far, and Mr. Hamabe, who achieved it at the age of 35, is the youngest in history.
Mr. Hamabe and Mr. Kenichi Chen (2nd generation owner chef of Sichuan Hanten)
Realizing a dream since elementary school and going to the path of cooking
Mr. Hamabe was drawn into the world of cooking after seeing his father, who was a Chinese chef. After graduating from junior high school, I went to a vocational school for a year, moved from Osaka to Tokyo at the age of 16, and started working at Akasaka Sichuan Hotel. When I started working, I had to spend a hard time building up my skills, such as washing 300 woks a day. Mr. Hamabe looks back on those days and says, "The reason why I am receiving various awards now is because I was in the early stages of my career." Mr. Hamabe is approaching his 20th year as a chef. He told me that he would like to focus on teaching his juniors from now on, and that he would like to have his own shop in the future. I'm looking forward to Hamabe's future activities.
Inquiries about this page
Inagi City Planning Department Secretariat and Public Relations Division
2111 Higashi Naganuma, Inagi City, Tokyo
Phone: 042-378-2111 Fax: 042-377-4781
