BY MELINDA JOE
A TO ZAIYU: After almost a decade in Jimbocho, Tokyo, Zaiyu Hasegawa is taking his restaurant, Den, to a new venue.
ON A WARM June evening, Zaiyu Hasegawa ascended the stage at an awards ceremony in New York, where the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list had named his Tokyo restaurant, Jimbocho Den, “One to Watch.” Standing beneath a life-size projection of his photograph, he wore an expression of giddy excitement tinged with mild terror, as if he had just turned up at a surprise birthday party and opened the door onto a room full of a thousand strangers. As the MC pushed the microphone toward him, Hasegawa leaned forward and smiled gamely. “I don’t speak English,” he said, before thanking everyone in Japanese. The audience erupted in cheers.