Ryuki Kawasaki was the chef of Mezzaluna at Lebua in Bangkok, Thailand, when I interviewed him for The Luxury of Attention.
Kawasaki was among the eighty hoteliers and chefs whose conversations form the basis of the book. Not every one of those conversations produced a passage that appears under the person’s name in the chapters. Some, like his, did their work earlier, in the long period of reading and comparing interviews from which the book’s argument took shape. When I set out what the best chefs have in common, from the discipline of creative practice to the daily protection of a standard, his account was part of the evidence I weighed.
I have chosen to list him here, as I have listed everyone I spoke with, because the book’s claims rest on the whole body of interviews and a reader deserves to know whose voices stand behind them. There is no quotation from him on this page, since the book does not quote him directly.