Over his loaded schedule as chef-owner of Kyoto’s three Michelin-starred Kikunoi restaurant, Yoshihiro Murata travels the world to spread the word about washoku. The traditional Japanese cuisine was listed by Unesco as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity in 2013 and Murata played no small role in campaigning for its listing.

The venerable chef and goodwill ambassador for Japanese cuisine was in Kuala Lumpur earlier this year to give a demo on making dashi, a stock con-sidered to be at the centre of Japanese cuisine. It has been said that in Japanese cuisine, all roads lead to dashi, the base of all that is umami and yummy.