Here's the trailer for Kakehashi, an upcoming feature-length documentary about Tokyo-born Arizona chef Nobuo Fukuda. Set to be released this winter, filmmaker Andrew Gooi tells the story of Fukuda — who won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Southeast in 2007 — and his quest to achieve "kakehashi" (literally translated: bridge-building) between his native Japanese cuisine and Western cooking.
As Fukuda explains in the trailer, he never quite felt like he fit in in Japan. Here in the U.S., the self-proclaimed iconoclast has become known for the unique perspective on Japanese food; he currently owns and operates Nobuo at Teeter House in Phoenix, which serves as a teahouse by day and an izakaya by night. He's certainly come a long way from when he first arrived in the U.S. in the 1980s, arriving with just $400 in his pocket to take a job cooking teppanyaki at Benihana.
• TRAILER | Kakehashi: A Portrait of Chef Nobuo Fukuda [Vimeo]
• All Video Interludes [E]
