Joining the NANRO USA Fellowship as part of the 2025 cohort, Chef Yuu Shimano spent the first twelve years of his career in France, beginning at the two-Michelin-starred La Villa des Lys in Cannes and rising to Chef de Partie of meats and sauces at Restaurant Guy Savoy in Paris, holding three Michelin stars. In the spring of 2023 he opened his first restaurant of his own, Restaurant Yuu, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn — a room whose eighteen counter seats host an eighteen-course French omakase each evening, and one that earned a Michelin star within six months of opening.
Two lines run through Chef Shimano's work: the precise technique that French classical training wrote into his hands, and the exactness, formality, and omotenashi spirit of Japan. What he adds on top of them, day after day, is a simple commitment — no ingredient wasted. For a chef of that grain, the NANRO USA Fellowship visit to Korea, meeting its terroir, its fermentation, and its seasons, became a chance to add a new layer to a language already his own.
