A few months ago, we discovered something very interesting and we just had to share with you! It all started when we were dining at a fantastic restaurant in London, where we ate Nikkei cuisine. I bet you are wondering, what is Nikkei cuisine?

We were instantly intrigued, as we had never heard of this exotic sounding cuisine before. After enjoying a fabulous meal, it got us thinking, we live in a global cuisine culture and we like to think we select tableware for you that will suit a lot of different food styles.

We wanted to know more about this little-known style of cooking, so we did some research and wanted to share this with you in a blog…

It’s fascinating; and you may know all know this already but in case you don’t, here it goes. In short, Nikkei cuisine originated over 120 years ago when thousands of Japanese workers were lured to Peru with the promise of 2-year job contracts.

Understandably, many decided to stay, creating lives and families in their adopted country where they wanted to eat the type of food they were accustomed to. Gradually, they influenced the local cuisine, adapting meat dishes to fish and adding ingredients to traditional fare, such as, ginger and seaweed to Ceviche.
Wait, there’s more. Over the years, this cuisine has inspired the likes of Nobu Matsuhisa and Ferran & Albert Adria, but it is true to say that as a cuisine it still has lots of potential.
You may wonder why such a seemingly odd pair of Japanese and Peruvian food would work at all, but when you consider that both cultures share rice as a food staple and there is also a great harmony of key ingredients, such as Soy and Chilli, you can see that gradual evolution would naturally take place and people would explore further, because it tasted good.
Having eaten and immensely enjoyed the food, we are fascinated by this cuisine. So much so, that we decided to try this out in our new Autumn/Winter Portfolio.

We asked Chef Daniel Watkins, if he would be up to creating some Nikkei dishes for our Autumn/Winter photo shoot…see his results in this blog and also in our Autumn/Winter Portfolio! 
Like the true artist he is, he was immediately inspired by the prospect of combining the delicacy of Japanese style with some great Peruvian staple ingredient. What he came up with was visually stunning. Daniel admitted that he was surprised that so many of the ingredients he research for this style of cuisine, were already standard items in his kitchen!
Interested in trying Nikkei cuisine, but not sure what plates will work for this type of cuisine? Have a look at Daniel Watkins Look Book here.