Culinary Close-Up

• Q1: You founded Saint Pierre in December 2000. In an industry that often celebrates the “new,” how do you maintain the discipline to stay sharp and relevant in the same market for 25 years without losing the “soul” of the original vision? 

Chef Emmanuel: Someone once told me: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, build the right team. In this business, nothing meaningful happens if you work alone. Restaurants are not solo performances, they are orchestras. We started small, grew slowly and organically, and stayed focused on what we do. If I had to reduce it to a few words: Be adaptable. Be patient.  And above everything else, be consistent. 

• Q2: You’ve often said that Saint Pierre is a “partnership of values” with your wife, Edina Hong. After a quarter-century of operating at the highest level, how has your division of labor between “Strategic Vision” and “Culinary Craft” evolved to meet the demands of a 2026 audience? 

Chef Emmanuel: You can own the best car in the world, but without a driver it goes nowhere.  In our case, Edina has always been both compass and engine. She carries the vision, but also the discipline required to keep a business alive—the structure, the consistency, the relentless attention to quality demanded by operations. I’m different. I’m the craftsman, the artist, the technician who turns ideas into something real on a plate. Underneath our arguments and late-night conversations is respect for each other’s expertise, and that balance matters more than people think. Very few brilliant chefs are also good with business; we are blessed to have the best of both worlds in our team.

Saint Pierre & Shoukouwa

The Clinical Frontier & Wellness

• Q4: Your “Featured Chef Menu” at Alexandra Hospital is being called a revolution in “Therapeutic Nutrition”. How do you translate a 2-star Michelin technique like Kombujime (curing fish in kelp) into a public hospital setting where the goal is recovery, not luxury? 

Chef Emmanuel: The challenge is mostly technical. Dietitians give nutritional directions while cooks execute recipes, and they speak different languages. Instead of starting with what we could use, we began with what we could not: salt, more precisely, sodium chloride. We studied what salt does to our perception of flavour and what can replace that sensation when it is removed.  We started with cooking—slow reductions, roasting, fermentation, layering natural glutamates. Little by little we rebuilt familiar dishes with a deeper level of technique hidden underneath.

• Q5: As a long-time vegetarian and yoga practitioner, does this distance from the ingredient allow for a more “architectural” or objective approach to flavor layering? 

Chef Emmanuel: I became vegetarian for health reasons, which pulled other parts of my life along with it. But the real transformation happened in the kitchen.  I moved from quantity to quality, from abundance to restraint, realizing that less really is more. Instead of building layers until the dish becomes a crowd, I ask the opposite questions: What is the best ingredient I can use right now? What can I remove that adds nothing?  Simplicity is brutally complicated.

Chef Emmanuel Stroobant

The “Ensō” Philosophy

• Q3: Your current menu is inspired by the Ensō (Zen Circle). For our readers who see the aesthetic beauty but not the struggle, what does “Mindful Gastronomy” actually look like during a high-pressure Friday night service? 

Chef Emmanuel: Ensō has long resonated with me because it represents both discipline and freedom, two forces that define us at Saint Pierre. Well before it became a familiar visual language in modern plating, I began using the circle as a way to express this philosophy on the plate, not only as a visual signature, but as a deliberate expression of balance and harmony. From a flavour perspective, it also ensures that every element on the plate exists in balance. This continues to shape how each menu at Saint Pierre is conceived, from the structure of each composition to the way flavours move across the palate.

• Q6: You recently opened Saki at the JW Marriott Tokyo, an intimate 8-seat experience. What was the “cultural bridge” you had to build, and why return to such a small format? 

Chef Emmanuel: In Tokyo, we share the same intention with the JW Marriott team: to create something new, exciting, but still approachable, so eating at Saki doesn’t feel foreign. On a chef’s level, Tokyo requires you to understand, accept, and respect the culture, keeping in mind that losing your temper isn’t passion, it’s weakness. As for the format, we’ve run Shoukouwa for 10 years, so an 8-seat counter isn’t new. If I were starting from scratch in 2026, an 8-seat counter would be my first choice: smaller space, less rent, fewer staff, and profitability becomes crystal clear.