It’s not every day you see five top chefs crouched down on the ground picking carrots and biting into wasabina (Japanese mustard greens) in an organic farm in Japan. That was exactly the scene at Duca Farm in Karuizawa — chefs Mingoo Kang of Mingles in Korea, Julien Royer of Odette in Singapore, Vaughan Mabee of Amisfield in New Zealand, Joris Rousseau of Feuille in Hong Kong and Stephan Duhesme of Metiz in the Philippines were like kids in a candy shop, roaming around tasting, laughing, and dreaming up flavour combinations.
This band of award-winning chefs and their families were invited to Karuizawa, an upscale mountainous resort town in Nagano Prefecture, just an hour away from Tokyo. The reason? Simply to stop and smell the flowers, or in their case, fresh herbs. Between the frenetic pace of leading a kitchen, attending high-octane events like the recently concluded Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards, and maintaining an ever-important online presence, the life of a modern chef doesn’t stop. This four-day retreat was an antidote to all of that.
“I think it’s very important to get out of your environment to think and create again,” said Huy Hoang, the affable founder of Shishi-Iwa House who cooked up the idea of a chef’s retreat. Inspired by a New York Times article where chefs gathered to make bread and exchange ideas, he thought of bringing culinary artists together with no agenda other than to have them experience Karuizawa, a destination he fell in love with in 2015.
