In September 2022 we introduced you to Kenji Yoshitsuka, picking him out as an exciting talent and definitely one to watch. Well, we don’t like to brag but Kenji’s proven us right, notching up a barnstorming couple of years including an international cooking competition and a major promotion to the helm of a prestigious fine-dining restaurant.

In 2022, Kenji was the executive pastry chef for Good Group Hospitality, creating spellbinding desserts for stellar Auckland dining rooms such as Botswana Butchery, White & Wong’s and Harbourside. The big step up to the role of head chef at Harbourside in 2023 was bittersweet: while he relished the challenge, taking control of the entire menu meant stepping back from his beloved desserts. “But it’s definitely given me a lot more varieties of flavour to play with. I can always cross over flavours from savoury to dessert and dessert to savoury. It does sound weird, but it actually makes sense when you try it. The challenge is to mash things up, use all the things I’ve learned over time.”

And those lessons learned include strands from growing up in the Philippines and Japan, learning both Asian and classical French cooking at culinary school in Japan, then coming to New Zealand to further his experience. “It’s very refreshing because it gives me a vision of what I could potentially create – to play around with my background of Japanese food and start to incorporate my Filipino cooking culture as well. But my main learning was traditional French. So can we really say that there is Filipino, Japanese and French altogether? There’s a lot of culture right there, there’s a lot of background right there.”

Witness a dish currently headlining on Harbourside’s spring menu, a Filipino-influenced pork belly, fermented carrot with gochujang purée, surrounded by carrots intriguingly twisted so they look like licorice sticks. Or a tiramisu with pistachio cream and parmesan shavings. This last combo raised eyebrows, he says, but it’s nothing new for him, cheese commonly being used in Filipino desserts. “In the Philippines we love dessert to be so sweet, so you always need something to balance it out and pull down that sweetness. [The parmesan] really helps balance that whole palate of the nuttiness, the tanginess of the coffee and the sweetness of the cream.”

Before throwing himself into the head chef role, Kenji took some time to go to France. You see, ever since he was a teenager watching Iron Chef on TV, his vision was to do that – to battle it out in a cooking competition and proudly don a chef’s jacket with his country’s flag on the collar. So, in 2023 he was part of a team competing in the International Catering Cup in Lyon. “I couldn’t say no. I wanted to put that heavy pressure on myself and see what I can do at that international level of cooking.” And while it did not result in a big win, it’s an experience he cherishes deeply. “It was an incredible feeling, being able to represent a country and to cook my heart out. I’m really glad I did it. Even just once, I think everybody should feel that.” But which country’s flag was on his jacket? New Zealand’s, of course.

For this feature, Cuisine asked Kenji to return to his first love and create some spectacular desserts. “Dessert has always been my passion and what I really love to do. That’s where I put the full capacity of my creativity. I choose to do pastry because it stuns people: ‘Wow,’ they say, ‘That’s incredible. It’s like edible artwork’.”