Hiroo Nagahara

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT HIROO NAGAHARA

Chef Hiroo Nagahara may as well have been born with a fish in one hand and a knife in the other. In the culinary industry herself, Hiroo’s mother introduced him to the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. That experience in conjunction with work at his father’s fish market provided him with a deep understanding of the nuances of different fish and how to work with them. By his teenage years, Hiroo possessed fish fabrication skills on par with many considerably more experienced chefs. For a time it seemed as though Hiroo may abandon the culinary world, as he pursued a degree in physics with a concentration in quantum mechanics. During college, though, he worked at Dragonfly – modern izakaya and sushi – where he was elevated to head sushi chef in a year and a half and executive sous not long after that. While working at Dragonfly, he saved his days off to stage at Norman’s of Orlando, Florida in order to further cultivate his burgeoning culinary passion in a fine dining setting. Shortly thereafter he was approached by the Charlie Trotter organization to help launch their new restaurant “Bar Charlie” in Las Vegas. After two months of exhaustive planning, 24-year-old Chef de Cuisine Hiroo Nagahara and his team launched the 18-seat restaurant to broad acclaim (Harvey Steiman review, Wine Spectator, Robert Mondavi issue, 2008; top 10 sushi restaurants in the United States, Bon Appétit, 2009;), garnering the respect of renowned chefs and critics alike. Chef Hiroo describes his style as nature driven modernist cuisine – scenic, ingredient driven cuisine in which every dish has a story – and is driven by the challenge of taking an ingredient of the highest quality from Mother Nature and transforming it to something greater without destroying its purity. His desire to remain on the cutting edge of high-end gastronomy has led Hiroo to pursue stages under the world’s greatest chefs in preparation for the launching of a restaurant all his own.