On February 15, 2024, the final judging for “RED U-35 2023,” a competition to discover “food creators” who will pioneer a new era, was held, and Yui Yamamoto, Sous Chef of ESqUISSE, was awarded the Grand Prix “2023 RED EGG”.
She also received the Asako Kishi Award, the highest award given to the best female chef.
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to everyone involved.
For more details, please visit
https://www.redu35.jp/progress/year2023/red/
Final judging dishes (from RED U-35’s Instagram)
Name of the dish
Shedding
About the dish
Gastronomy using lobster and shellfish, honey, wild vegetables, miso, tofu
Main Ingredients (Ingredients and Place of Origin)
Lobster Mie Prefecture
”Cooking for children who will be adults in 2050.”
In 2050, 25 years from now, what kind of world do we want to live in? I give you this dish to help you move toward the future you wish for.
I believe that although not everything will be perfect in this world in 2050, things will be better as a result of a rethinking of the way we live and consume, both as creators and eaters.
I wanted to focus mainly on shrimp, which is what led me to discover the appeal of Japanese food. Among shrimp, I focused on the culture of ama (women divers) in Mie Prefecture, which has a long history of preserving sustainable resource maintenance practices.
I actually visited the area to get a taste of the ama culture, the guardians of Japan’s coasts, and created a plate with my own interpretation of my memories of eating live lobsters grilled whole over a charcoal fire. I hope that the smiles on their faces as they laugh and say they are glad to have become ama divers will continue long into the future.
Honey is an ingredient that I told the children in the first round of judging about the important role that honeybees play on the earth. As a result, they will protect bees, and in 2050, delicious honey will be grown all over the world, providing countless benefits to the local ecosystem.
I used butterbur sprouts because I imagined that the seeds of respect for nature that I sowed in my children’s lunch have grown and blossomed. Wild vegetables grow in healthy mountains. I hope that through our change of mindset, the mountains will gradually regenerate and that we will be able to enjoy wild vegetables such as butterbur sprouts in the future.
Tofu and miso have been eaten throughout Japan’s long history, and I believe they will become absolutely indispensable ingredients in the future. Tofu and miso, which are relatively easy to obtain in this day and age, exist without respect for the original flavors of the ingredients, and I wanted to reiterate to them as adults the traditional tofu and miso that have been handed down from generation to generation. I believe that the future will be a better world as the spread of true deliciousness makes it possible to reduce the impact of our diet on the environment.
If indeed we are still able to enjoy the foods I just described in 2050, it means that our actions have changed the future.
I strongly hope that there will be a future where people will be able to eat this food.