Noriyuki Sugie
ASIATE | New York City

Biography
Noriyuki Sugie’s entrée into cooking was serendipitous. At the age of 15, he took a job in Tokyo at a California-style restaurant in order to support his passion as a guitar player. Upon completing high school, he entered Tokyo’s prestigious Tsuji Culinary School in Osaka, Japan. Sugie soon discovered he was as fervent about cooking as he was about music.

In the beginning, Sugie was also strongly influenced by his mother’s traditional Japanese cooking as well as frequent forays with his family into fine dining establishments that offered Chinese, Japanese, French and Euro-Western cuisine.

Sugie melded his traditional Asian-style technique with classic French training while furthering his studies at Tsuji Culinary School in Chateau de l’Eclair, France. He perfected his French culinary skills and knowledge of French wines over a five-year period while working at three Michelin-starred restaurants in Bordeaux, the three-starred L’Aubergade, the one-starred Le Moulin de Martorey and the two-starred Hostellerie de Vieux.

In 1996, Sugie’s culinary curiosity was piqued by the arrival of American cuisine to the forefront of the global culinary pantheon, thus inspiring the next destination on his culinary odyssey: the world-famous Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago. There he served as chef de partie.

After two years, Sugie was ready for a new adventure and headed to Sydney, Australia to work at one of the city’s top establishments, Tetsuya, as sous chef. During his two-year tenure, Tetsuya was named “Restaurant of the Year” twice by the widely read Sydney Morning Herald.

Over a 10-year period, Sugie’s culinary scope continued to evolve and he grew eager to venture beyond the kitchen. Opening Restaurant VII in Sydney as chef and partner exposed him to restaurant management and provided a stage to showcase a culmination of his culinary talent with complete artistic control.

Restaurant VII, with its amazingly intricate, sumptuous French-Japanese cuisine and theater-like service, brought Sugie rave reviews, celebrity status and capacity crowds. Shortly after opening, the establishment was named “Best New Restaurant” by the Sydney Morning Herald.