A moment with: Dawid Uszynski

Over the last 5 years, I’ve spent more time at Yashin Ocean House and Yashin Sushi than in any other restaurant in the world. I also seem to be chatting to Dawid Uszynski over the chef’s counter more often than I see most of my friends. After years spent learning from and co-creating with owners Shinya San and Yasu San at Yashin restaurants, he’s about to set off for Beirut to open a brand new sushi bar, Mayha (article coming soon!). Before his departure, he kindly granted me some of his time to discuss our mutual passion for food, Japan and answer some quick fire questions. And we started right at the beginning...

What is your youngest memory of food?

I was born in Poland in a city called Opole near Wroclaw. My father, he was always cooking a lot, at home and on camping trips...he always did that, always had his campfire and these big cast iron pots, and cooking all this great stuff. Actually, I owe it to him for sure. We’d be doing a lot of fishing, catching fish and cooking them. That was a lot of fun, I remember it well. Then, when my mother left to Italy, she started to cook there, and she was bringing pasta and all this parmesan cheese. She brought it home and cooked it so I started cooking too. Those were my youngest memories of food. That and eating gooseberries and redcurrants from the side of the road.

When did you decide that you wanted to be a chef? Talk me through your career.

My career as a chef was a coincidence, completely. I came to London when I was young, and I was selling sandwiches on a bicycle for a year. Because I was into bicycles, I met these guys at the garage, and one day another Polish showed up. He was the head chef in a restaurant called Fig Bistro (now closed) in Islington. And he was like “hey youngster, want to help me? I need a kitchen porter”. So I started to work there as a kitchen porter, but because it was a very small restaurant - it was only me and him in the kitchen - I was helping him a lot. I realised then that I really liked this. To cut, to cook, to prep. That was the first place I tasted a steak, medium rare. I tasted many things for the first time there. But, at the same time this restaurant was owned by - Kristofer, who found investors for a restaurant he opened in St John’s street where he would serve proper danish cuisine. He opened this beautiful place, North Road, with the most modern kitchen I’ve ever worked in. This place was very interesting - that was the place that made me want to cook totally, for life. One of my best friends to this day was my sous chef at that place. He was always trying to sneak a little bit of Japanese influence and Japanese techniques into his dish. Always when he was prepping prawns he’d be using Japanese techniques, and would tell me stories about japan. Because of him I started to be interested in Japanese but I still didn’t know I wanted to become Japanese chef. This danish place was really good. It has a Michelin star, but unfortunately it didn’t thrive. So when it closed down I went to AQUA because my friend Anders went and took me there. It was Japanese but it wasn’t “Japanese-Japanese”. The place was too big, there were too many people in the kitchen, it was a job, it wasn’t passion. Then I left and worked a little bit in Selfridges on more modern European food. This takes us to 2013 when Yashin Ocean House opened, 2 year after Yashin sushi.

The first concept of Yashin ocean house was with a French-Italian chef who grew up with french cuisine and worked at the Fat Duck. Ya-san and Shin-san wanted to make this new concept. It was because of him that I came here - he knew a friend of mine (another coincidence). So this whole time I'd been following modern European, Danish cuisine, but when I came to Yashin and saw Shinya San and Ya San I became a horse with blinkers. I got tunnel vision. I didn’t ask questions, I just followed and I do it until now.

Initially I was working with both Ya-san and Shinya-san. When one of them was on, I would mimic him, when the other was I was following him. I became a mirror and there were no conflicts. I was initially moulded by Ya-san because I was looking for skills. Cutting, knife skills, that was where Ya-san was a master. I never really thought that much about taste in the early days. It was all about craft, craft and precision. After I did realize that that’s not all there is in Japanese cuisine, and I learned the importance of things like taste and balance, and that’s what has become a bigger priority for me working with Shin-ya san.

What is the biggest lesson you learned at Yashin?

When I started, Yasu San told me “just keep the knife flat, don’t think too much”. But then I had a huge journey in my head, with many many ideas on how to sharpen a knife. They ranged from putting a cast on my arm to control the movement of the hand more and have more control, to building machines to hold my hands and then after this whole journey and all these ideas and all the time thinking about other ways to sharpen knives, brought me back full circle to “ you just need to keep flat and sharpen”. That I remember forever. Don’t try to over engineer, just focus. I needed that to realise, this huge trip. There and back again.

Is there anything you’d do differently in your career if you could do it all over?

When I look at Yashin I would say I would chose to concentrate on taste earlier on, not just craft. Earlier on, when I was young I skipped a bit of cooking to party and have fun, but I don’t regret that.

Talk to me about your trip to japan - what was your biggest takeaway.

From a professional point of view, it’s that anything matters and nothing matters. Some places concentrate on being very pure and clean and make good looking sushi, then you have places you don’t care about this, and give you incredible experiences of taste. As a professional I can see mistakes, covered by unexpectedly high quality of taste. That’s what I learned the most. Nothing matters, yet everything matters. You can be a genius in one aspect and not care about anything else. There are a lot of specialists in Japan.

What were you favourite places?

For Sushi - Kimura-san, he was so concerned about taste, and that was what made it even more concentrated that the best sushi places.

For Kaiseki - I have a huge respect to Murata San and Kikunoi, I knew all his dishes when I went there and they were like in the books. That was amazing.

There were places we went to in the mountains to Miyamasou, and the environment, the setting, it winded us. We couldn’t even speak ti was so beautiful. We were just sitting in silence. Then we went to a place in Nara, called Tsukomo. Very modern vision, young, new wave of Kaiseki. That’s what I remember the most, when it comes to the dishes.

I’ve got some quick-fire questions for you now.

Like really fast? Ok let’s do it.

Who do you look up to, who is your idol?

Before it was always Jiro - I watched the documentary maybe a 100 times in my life. Now the more I’m in the to sushi, the more I change. I don’t have a single idol now. Before Jiro it was Rene Renzepi [NOMA] alot. I love the philosophy of Massimo Bottura very much. Those were the three very big influences for me.

Name a chef out there that’s doing something very special at the moment.

Very special? Massimo Bottura - he’s very special for me. He’s using all his senses, childhood memories, the history of Italy, he’s trying to bring back the past. His philosophy it’s really healthy for me. He always works to teach people that food is very important. It’s not just something to sell. Food is culture, it’s memory, it’s history, it connects people, it’s progress.

Most memorable dish you’ve ever had?

Meat fruit at Dinner by Heston. That’s definitely the most memorable.

A restaurant you’ve never been to, you’d love to go?

Osteria Francescana

And a Country?

Peru is on my list. And i’d like to eat in at least 5 restaurants in Lima.

What is your favourite dish on the Omakase?

Actually, the same as yours. The Unagi Ochazuke. I love this grilled eel. That’s one of the best dishes ever. That and the two asparagus dishes (green and white). That was really good, very seasonal, very simple yet so complex. That was a good dish.

What makes you get up every morning?

I know that the one thing that has made me come here every day for the last 5 years is to beat Yasu San and Shinya San. I’m very very competitive. I was a professional shooter, and still hold records in Poland that were never beaten. Always precision. Shooting is precision and concentration and challenging yourself. In England chefs are very competitive. The english style is super competitive. And that’s great, because they always improve each-other as a result.

Do you have a few words of wisdom for a young chef starting out?

Don’t take a break. Keep going. Never take career breaks. As long as you’re young you can always work hard. The older you get the harder it gets, so when you’re young, power through. Always try to improve yourself. The older you get the more responsibilities you have and the harder it gets to power through.

[All the photographs below are features from the Yashin Omakase from the last few months, an ever evolving menu, designed by chef Shin-Ya San and Dawid Uszynski, which will form the first four seasons of Mayha in Beirut]