Jun Tanaka
Jun Tanaka
After learning his craft in the UK’s best restaurants throughout the 1990s, Jun Tanaka utilises his rigorous classical training to create impeccable small plates of French and Mediterranean food at his relaxed neighbourhood restaurant in Fitzrovia.
As a young chef breaking into the industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were just a handful of restaurants at the top end of the country’s gastronomy. Jun Tanaka spent time working in nearly all of them. After mastering classical French technique under some of the greats, he now owns his own restaurant The Ninth, channelling his incredible skill into small, shareable plates of food in relaxed surroundings. But despite coming from a very food-focused family, he had a few other ideas before he settled on becoming a chef.
‘I was born in New York then lived in Japan until I was seven, when my family moved over to the UK,’ says Jun. ‘I’ve been here ever since. Eating was a massive part of my life and something I absolutely loved, so I was always interested in cooking, but my first career choice was to become a film critic when I was about eight. My parents were always very supportive, so my father asked me to actually write a critique of a film I’d watched. That sort of sucked the joy out of it, so I thought I might become an artist instead. That then morphed into becoming a musician, as I went to Trinity College of Music playing piano and cello in my early teens, but when I got there I realised my talents were nothing compared to some of the other kids! After that I decided on cooking, and that was the one that stuck.’
Jun enrolled on a hotel management course, but found the class only cooked on one day a week and he didn’t find the managerial side of things interesting. After the first year he was kicked out due to lack of attendance, so decided to write to the best restaurants in the country to see if he could get an apprenticeship. Le Gavroche took him on when he was nineteen.
‘When you first start out, you can barely put a meal together. My first job was on the canapé section julienning celeriac – I had no idea what it was for but it meant I learnt knife skills very, very quickly. As an apprentice you are given the most basic tasks but you can see yourself improve almost instantly, and the commitment of all the chefs there motivated me to stay. It was long hours and really hard work, but I stuck it out for just over a year. Learning the foundations at Le Gavroche really set the precedent for everything else, and it was good to get that reality check of how hard being a chef is when you’re young, rather than later on in life.’
From Le Gavroche Jun progressed to Chez Nico, working under the legendary Nico Ladenis. During his two years there, Jun worked on every section, vastly improving his knowledge of classical French cooking and building upon what he’d learnt about working hard at Le Gavroche. He then spent eight months at The Capital, before going to London’s Les Saveurs in the early 1990s. ‘It was one of the best places I’ve ever worked, as the head chef had worked in Bangkok and brought a lot of Asian influences into the French food. It was also a more relaxing environment, which was refreshing coming from Le Gavroche and Chez Nico. It was where I learnt how I’d like to run my own kitchen one day.’
Two years after starting at Les Saveurs, the restaurant was bought by Marco Pierre White. While many members of the team left (as is often the case when a restaurant changes hands), Jun saw it as an opportunity and agreed to ensure a smooth handover in the kitchen – so long as he was given the chance to work in Marco’s three-starred eponymous restaurant when the opportunity arose. One year later, he joined Restaurant Marco Pierre White as one of four sous chefs.
‘It was hard work, as you can imagine,’ he says of his time there. ‘At that time Marco was without question creating the most exciting food in London. I’d never seen something so perfect, and nothing else mattered apart from the food on the plate. There were no compromises – food costs didn’t even come into the equation! Everyone was incredibly talented, and there was a certain prestige about working there because it was so tough – Marco described it as the SAS of kitchens. I hated it, to be perfectly honest, but at the same time I knew how lucky I was to be there. Looking back, I’m 100% happy that I worked there because now when I have a stressful day, I can remember my time there and think, ‘at least it isn’t that bad!’
By the time Jun was twenty-seven, he was a seriously accomplished chef who had experienced some of the country’s toughest and most revered kitchens. He left Restaurant Marco Pierre White to take a job working with Daniel Boulud, but ended up not taking it because his girlfriend at the time didn’t want to move. Instead, he became junior sous at The Square under Phil Howard. ‘What I loved about Phil’s food was that you wanted to eat everything on the menu – there weren’t just two or three dishes that really stood out. That might sound obvious, but that’s a very hard thing to achieve. I loved working there.’
Despite his impeccable ability, Jun had yet to gain much experience actually running a kitchen, so he went back to The Capital after a year at The Square to become Eric Chavot’s sous chef. Here, he was part of the team that gained the restaurant two Michelin stars, and started to create his own dishes and take charge of the kitchen in Eric’s absence. This gave him the confidence to take his first head chef job, at a small neighbourhood restaurant called Chives, before becoming executive chef of Pearl at the Chancery Court Hotel in Holborn. After helping build it from the ground up, he stayed there for an impressive eight years, before finally deciding to start looking into opening his own restaurant at the end of 2012.
‘I’d always thought becoming an executive chef for a group of restaurants was where I wanted my career to end up, but in those final few years at Pearl I realised I wanted to create an idea from scratch that was completely mine without any interference from anyone else,’ he explains. ‘I gave myself a year to find a suitable site, but it ended up taking three!’
Jun’s determination to not compromise on the site paid off, however, as in 2015 The Ninth – named because it is the ninth restaurant he’s worked at – quickly became one of Fitzrovia’s most popular restaurants. Offering affordable small plates in a relaxed environment, it showcases Jun’s incredible classical background with flecks of Mediterranean flair.
‘I’d always worked in classical French kitchens because when I was starting out, all the top restaurants were French,’ he says. ‘The longer I cooked that style of food, the more I realised how complex and historically interesting it is. It’s also the best base for looking at other types of cooking from around the world – without it I don’t think you can really get to the heart of gastronomy. So I combined French classical cooking with Mediterranean food – which is what I like to eat at home – and put it in relaxed surroundings with a neighbourhood restaurant atmosphere.’
The Ninth was an instant hit, but the real boost to the business came when it received a Michelin star in 2016. ‘It was a genuine surprise – we were never aiming for one or thinking about it, so that made it even better,’ says Jun. ‘Without question winning it has been the highlight of my career, and it made a big difference to the restaurant and was a great reward for the team here.’
Despite the Michelin star and Jun’s background in classical, white tablecloth-style restaurants, The Ninth has an incredibly casual, laidback feel to it – although the food is crafted with expert precision and plate after plate comes out consistently excellent. For an affordable, delicious masterclass in classical technique and French-Mediterranean flavours, there isn’t a better restaurant in London to book a table at.
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