Appearance at World King of Chef's Cooking Competition 2025

Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide is honored to be the knife brand of choice for one of the participants at World King of Chef's Cooking Competition, part of Awaji Island's World King of Chef's Summit Awaji Japan 2025.

Held in November, this competition brought international participants from all over Japan to compete for prizes, with support from younger students at L'ECOLE VANTAN Specialty School (レコールバンタン 専門部).

Chef Jun Arie qualified for the competition, and was the very first customer to purchase our VG-10 AYA Damascus Wa-Gyuto knife. As he mentioned to us he would be using our knife in this competition, we sent a cameraman along to take photos of his work and support him as he aimed to be Awaji Island's champion!

Held as part of AWAJI Well-being Week 2025 in collaboration with PASONA Group, Awaji Island's Ocean Terrace was home to 14 Japan-based international competitors for the day, challenging each of them to present a dish that used Awaji Island ingredients while adhering to sustainability and the theme "Healthy gourmet cuisine made with Awaji Island ingredients, to be passed down to future generations."

Awaji Island in particular is famous worldwide for its onions, and you can find them proudly stated as ingredients in many restaurants in Japan. The region also makes other famous foodstuffs such as Awaji beef and is a region with plentiful amounts of seafood, so sustainable fish and proteins were often seen in the dishes on display. Read our Meet the Chefs series about food researcher and chef-owner Shimamura Masaharu to learn more about sustainable fish culture in Osaka.

With a dish that was graded not only on taste, but beauty, theme adherence, and incorporation of the participant's home country cuisine and traditions, this was a challenging contest to both cook and plan for. With some chefs having cooked for years and others with Michelin Star backgrounds, this was a contest that required diligence and strict time management.

Cooking time was a total of just 105 minutes (60 minutes preparation, 45 minutes cooking), so chefs had to work fast with their assigned VANTAN assistants, all while working around film crews, judges, an enthusiastic crowd, and high-paced music.

Some of the competitors were veterans, and some were entering a cooking competition in Japan for the first time. This presented different challenges for each chef, but all of them at the end were able to submit a final dish for approval.

Entrants submitted these dishes beforehand as part of a qualification submission, so they had plenty of time to practice and prepare. This also meant these chefs were the best of the best in the submissions, so the competition level was high.

The judges were incredibly prestigious too, including people such as Chef Nakamura Katsuhiro (中村 勝宏), known as the first Japanese person to recieve a Michelin Star as grand chef for restaurant La Burdonnais in 1979 - and in the world of French cuisine, at that!

Nakamura has cooked for very famous and important dignitaries, including as a head chef at 2008's G8 summit in Hokkaido. The summit still has its menu posted on Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs website.

Cooking competitions are more than just the cooking itself, though. They are also a chance to get to know other chefs and culinary personalities, with the hope that fostering stronger connections leads to better food for everyone.

Before his move to Japan, Jun Arie studied in culinary school in Brazil and became interested in French cuisine there, quickly going from in his words "almost nothing" to working in Michelin-star restaurants. This included training under awarded chefs such as Jean Georges Vongetichten (known for Eden Rock and Jean-Georges), Philippe Mille (known for Philippe Mille Tokyo and ARBANE), Zaiyu Hasegawa (known for Den / Jimbocho Den) and Gaggan Anand (known for Gaggan and Gaggan Anand). Travelling internationally for cooking competitions, his travels brought him to Japan, which he has called home ever since.

Working previously at The Silver Lining and Oni Coffee in Osaka's Horie area, Jun is currently the head manager of The Hearth in Namba-Sennichimae. While he currently makes Australian-Italian cuisine right near our store in Dōguyasuji, his background in French cuisine is often represented in weekly specials, as well as his enjoyment of experimenting with cuisine combinations and breaking traditional norms - something that working outside of fine dining again has allowed him to do. Making a new dish every week has given Jun much experience in creating dishes with limited budget, staffing, and time, all while having to work on the fly and adhere to strict cost controls. Which is perfect for a cooking contest.

These experiences were represented in his final dish which used his "French culinary hometown" - Pan Fried Madai, Mikan, and Cream.

When asked about his dish choice, Jun said the following: "When I think of a new dish I always think it needs to have at least three components. So the name becomes those components, such as with Pan Fried Madai, Mikan, and Cream. I picked fish because it fits better in the theme of sustainability and health, and madai because it is in season not only during the competition, but throughout the year for testing purposes. I chose mikan (Satsuma mandarins) because I wanted a different type of citrus in my dish."

Madai (真鯛 or マダイ) is red sea bream, and while it is found in many places, the madai from Awaji Island is said to have a firm yet bouncy texture, due to the area's strong currents and whirlpools. You can learn more about madai from JETRO's article on this prized "king of fish" ingredient.

As Jun has competed in cooking competitions internationally, we wanted to get some advice regarding entering such contests, of which he said the following:

"Cooking at a place you haven't before is a challenge. Sometimes they give you a list of equipment, but it can vary from being a home kitchen to being a fully equipped one. So, it's almost impossible to anticipate every problem."

Jun tries to counter this by bringing everything essential himself, or keeping his competition dishes simple with lots of spare time for troubleshooting. This came in handy with his competition entry, as bringing his own plates allowed him to know precisely how to plate his dish. Jun also recommends experimenting with different pan sizes and heating elements, as this can wildly change how food is prepared.

"Then there's the ingredients. You often submit the recipe in a different season to when the competition happens, so some ingredients might not be available, or may even taste different. This gets even harder if the competition is being held in a foreign country."

Jun recommends always making sure your recipe has alternatives in case something has to change on the fly, and while you may get point deductions for this, you can still minimise them and present a dish to the best of your abilities. Ingredients can be different sizes too; the potatoes Jun used for his dish were much larger than what he had experimented with, which means they had to be cooked very differently in order to fully cook through.

"Finally, there's the execution. Being in a foreign environment with potentially different ingredients than you're used to, whilst being under a tight timeframe and media attention is usually enough to cause trouble."

Jun tries to mitigate this by bringing notes and reference sheets, as well as consulting with his assistant as much as possible during cooking to prevent any mishaps or enforced errors.

"Working in an organised fashion is essential, making notes that are easy to glance, having checklists and lists of steps. You can practice for months but still forget important components in the dish on the day itself."

A chef needs good tools to create good food, and we are happy to see Jun using our knives in his restaurant and competetively.

The AYA Wa-Gyuto that Jun used has a 210mm length blade, with a rosewood handle. Damascus patterns wave through the cladded blade, creating a luxurious experience without making the knife too heavy, weighing on average just 120 grams.

This knife has become Jun's main knife in the kitchen, with him remarking that it is easy to use and care for, and impressive to use in front of guests—plus in this case television cameras.

As a multi-purpose knife it is suitable for meats, seafoods, and vegetables, giving Jun an edge in a kitchen with various ingredients and strict time management. Using a gyuto in such competitions means that not only could he use his French culinary techniques best (as the gyuto originally comes from French knife design), but he didn't have to worry about changing knives as he prepared, allowing his assistant to only have to clean the one knife as Jun completed other tasks.

The Aya series is a release from us in October 2025, and has quickly become one of our most popular sellers. Infact, it is so popular we are constantly on re-order trying to make more of them!

Aya (綾) describes patterned fabric silk and the raised textures you may find in woven cloth, represented in the Damascus patterns found throughout the blade.

Available in Wa-Santoku, Wa-Gyuto, Wa-Petty, and Nakiri varieties, this selection of multi-purpose knives has quickly become a mainstay in kitchen and homes in Japan and around the world.

Most importantly, this series still focuses on cost performance, having good cutting ability while staying very competitively priced.

As an elegant series without a price point you'd normally see with luxurious items, this has quickly become a mainstay.

You can find our Aya collection here.

Jun has worked at many restaurants over the years, but currently you'll find him at The Hearth. Find information below, and come see us while you're there. We are only a few minutes walk away.

While the video is in Japanese, the competition was filmed in its entirety, and can be watched here or below.

Jun's cooking starts a bit after two hours into the video, which we have timestamped in the above underlined link.

Thank you to World King of Chef's Summit 2025 Awaji Japan for filming the event. You can also find out more about their event (and future ones) at the event site here.

We hope to see our kitchen knives at further competitions. If you are involved in, participating, or running a culinary contest, please feel free to reach out to us. Sakai Ichimonji Mitsuhide is always happy to promote Osakan and Japanese food, culinary, and tool culture.