The Japan Times

As a teenager in Tokyo, coming of age in the 1960s, Jimi Yui was by his own account a wild child.

Yui went to Cornell University [and] chose architecture. But then in 1978, in the fourth year of his degree, Yui did the one thing his parents were dead set against: He dropped out of architecture, changed majors and took up hospitality management. It didn’t matter that Cornell was one of the most reputable schools for hotel management in the world, Yui’s parents saw it as a return to the working environment that had consumed their lives...Having grown up in the hospitality industry, he had an innate understanding for that world.

It was a bold move, but his intuition served him well...He put his talents to work as a kitchen designer, a vocation that for the next 40 years would take him around the world and into hundreds of kitchens...After six years at Cini-Grissom, Yui left to establish his own design office, YuiDesign in 1986. One of the first big commissions he landed was outfitting the sushi bar at the Sony Club in Manhattan.

Over his four-decade career Yui has worked with many of the world’s most celebrated chefs, including Japanese chefs Masaharu Morimoto and Nobuyuki “Nobu” Matsuhisa. Along the way, he also picked up a special James Beard Award for his kitchen designs.

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