Matsumoto is a small tonkatsu kitchen and cookery school in Bangkok, and the home of the Chronicles series of food books, written by a man who could not cook at all until his first business collapsed.
Each book takes a single dish and follows it all the way down: where it came from, who cooked it first, what every ingredient is actually doing, and finally the recipe as it is cooked in our own kitchen. They are food histories with working recipes at the end, not recipe collections with history bolted on.
Twelve centuries of one fried pork cutlet, from Japan's imperial ban on eating meat to a Bangkok kitchen. 27 chapters in four parts.
How an Indian spice blend reached Japan on British ships, fed the Meiji navy, and became the most domestic dinner in the country. 30 chapters.
A ladder of twenty stages, from minced beef in a home pan up to A5 Kagoshima wagyu. Most people fail at meat because they skip steps.
A memoir in 50 chapters about more than ten businesses that failed, each chapter named after a song.
Small groups, everything cooked by your own hands, and the actual shop recipes handed over with nothing held back. Our studio is in Isaraphap 33, near Siriraj, on the Thonburi side of the river.
I ran a travel company. When the business went down I started cooking out of necessity, not love. Then one day someone told me to my face that my food had no roots. That sentence stopped me. I spent the next two years reading, testing and flying to Japan more than twenty times before I dared to open a single tonkatsu shop.
That is why every book I write begins with history, and why I give away the full recipes. I remember being the person who could not find the information anywhere.
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