Meet the Minneapolis chef who’s changing the way we think about Japanese dining

In a quaint second-story space with flowing Japanese noren curtains, chef Shigeyuki Furukawa stands with his arms to the side, looking straight ahead, a reflective expression on his face, as guests start to arrive at Kado no Mise.

It’s about appreciating and being present in the moment, he said. “The people in this room, the dishes, this evening cannot be duplicated.”

Furukawa is an elite chef bringing the ancient Japanese arts of multicourse Japanese omakase and kaiseki dinners to the Midwest at the Minneapolis restaurant he co-owns. To introduce such a rare concept can be a risky proposition. But the fact that the eight-year-old North Loop restaurant still draws regulars, attracts diners from near and far and continues to create buzz is a testament to the chef’s skill, craftsmanship and creativity.

Ahead of this year’s prestigious James Beard Awards, in which Furukawa is up for Best Chef: Midwest along with two other Minnesota chefs, Furukawa reflects on what motivates him to bring this bold style of dining to the local scene. (Five Minnesota chefs and restaurants are 2025 award finalists; the winners will be announced Monday night during an awards ceremony in Chicago),

Growing up in Tokyo with parents who worked full time, a young Furukawa found himself in the kitchen prepping meals with his mom and making his own snacks. One day in his early teens, he whipped up a light bite for himself and a friend after school. It was a revelation; Furukawa knew he wanted to become a chef.

“My friend smiled when he tried the food I made, and it was immediate how happy it made me,” he said. “When people start to smile or dance when they taste your food, the answer lies there.”

Furukawa gravitated toward kaiseki, the Japanese culinary art that features structured multiple courses and various techniques, while playing off the seasons allows chefs to stretch their imaginations. When Furukawa was old enough, he trained and became a kaiseki chef in Tokyo.

The budding chef worked a stint in New York before returning to Japan to apprentice under master chefs in Kyoto, where kaiseki originated in the 16th century. He moved to Minnesota to become a sushi chef at a local restaurant, but soon found that it didn’t satiate him the way designing multicourse tasting menus did.

“I was making sushi rolls and Japanese food that was Midwesternized. It made me so sad,” he said. “I wanted to set the story straight and introduce [this style of] Japanese food and culture to the Midwest and in America.”

Now that he has a place of his own, the chef carefully curates top-tier seasonal and regionally renowned ingredients that are sourced from Japan whenever possible. Most nights, Kado no Mise features omakase pre-fixe dinners inside its 26-seat dining room. Tuesdays are the exception, when the restaurant hosts intimate kaiseki dinners for 10 at the chef’s counter.

The omakase tastings are sushi-centric, where the chef’s skills are on full display — from cutting tuna pieces thick and whitefish thin to proportioning accompanying ingredients the way he was trained to realize the potential of all the dishes.

Meanwhile, kaiseki dinners emphasize seasonality, a wider range of dishes, culinary techniques and can include more courses. Traditional kaiseki dinners include appetizer, soup and tsukuri/sashimi courses as well as steamed, grilled and rice dishes before ending with dessert. Furukawa carefully contemplates each dish on the menu, which changes monthly.

“Kaiseki is more of a variety of cooking techniques and the process is very intense,” Furukawa said. “You need to grill, you need to make soup, you need to season the vegetables. That part is very interesting to me.”

In May, a 10-course kaiseki dinner rang in the spring season with dishes such as duck breast over a bed of housemade green pea tofu with Tokyo onion purée and Japanese sansho peppers. Mochi was steamed inside sakura leaves (plucked from cherry blossom trees after they’ve flowered) that mingled in a bowl with Spanish mackerel in a butterbur miso.

A sashimi course included fatty bluefin tuna from Mexico as well as grunt and needlefish sourced from famous fish markets in Tokyo and Fukuoka. To cap off the meal, Japanese strawberries, the naturally ultra-sweet bites that come into season starting in February, were served.

Presentation is just as important. Furukawa has amassed an extensive servingware collection with plates, bowls and cups sourced from Japan. Earthenware and lacquerware etched with nightingales are reserved for February, while ones with cranes are used in early spring, correlating with the birds’ migration in Japan. Dishware etched with cherry blossoms appears in April, peonies in June and ginkgo leaves in autumn. Cooler, bright colors take center stage on tablescapes in spring and summer, warm hues in the fall and winter.

“Not only should the food, but the tableware — every aspect in the restaurant should be changed with the seasons,” Furukawa said.

To keep the creative juices flowing, Furukawa takes regular trips to Japan. “I research what other famous Japanese restaurants are doing,” he said. “I go to Japan once a year. Every lunch or dinner is sushi, omakase or kaiseki.”

Just as he considers himself a lifelong student, Furukawa, 53, is passing on his knowledge.

Sous chef Daisuke Ishizuka, who trained at a kaiseki restaurant in Tokyo, pursued an apprenticeship at Kado no Mise. The chef originally moved to Minneapolis to work behind the sushi counter at another local Japanese restaurant, but when Ishizuka dined at Kado no Mise for the first time, he knew he wanted to be part of it.

Not only was Furukawa trained in traditional Japanese multicourse dinners, he was running one of only a handful of kaiseki restaurants in the country — and the only one in the Midwest. “I was struck by the restaurant’s deep commitment to Japanese tableware and ingredients — something I had thought was impossible to achieve in the U.S.,” Ishizuka said. “I immediately sensed he was a true Japanese artisan, and I felt a strong desire to work alongside him.”

Over the past eight years, Nicholas Skrowaczewski estimates he’s dined at Kado no Mise at least 25 times. While he considers the dinners a splurge (omakase starts at $84, kaiseki at $215 per person), the University of Minnesota assistant archivist saves money to spend his dollars there. He said the restaurant is best in class, just like the prominent omakase and kaiseki places he regularly seeks out in Japan, which he’s visited more than a dozen times.

“His kaiseki dinners are things that you will not find at any other Japanese restaurant in town and very few Japanese restaurants in this entire country. The proper flavors, textures, presentation — everything was exactly as I had experienced at the highest-quality places in Japan,” Skrowaczewski said.

“I’m amazed at how creative he can be within a strict blueprint, because kaiseki is a longstanding tradition with rules that are quite strict, but within those rules, chef Shigeyuki is extremely imaginative.”

Meanwhile, Charles Hwang dines at Kado no Mise once or twice a year for the omakase dinners, which he finds to be just as unique.

“When I have friends or family [in town], I want to take them somewhere special that they can’t find anywhere else. Even though some of them live in coastal cities, they haven’t experienced something like omakase,” he said. “I feel very lucky that Shigeyuki opened Kado no Mise here and offers a real omakase experience that’s just very hard to find outside of Japan.”

For Furukawa, it’s about giving diners an authentic experience in various styles of Japanese multicourse dining.

“Restaurants should be serving delicious food because diners are paying them to do so. That should be the bottom line,” he said. “Then, how much I can touch your heart and make it memorable, that is my mission.”

And if he can get a smile out of them when tasting his creations, as was witnessed many times at a recent dinner, it doesn’t get any better than that.