Love teriyaki and ready to give it a go at home from scratch? Tomi Japanese Restaurant Chef Joe Chan tells us it’s surprisingly simple – and tasty.

Chef Joe says there is no comparison to making your teriyaki sauce from scratch. It’s an incredibly easy recipe, and the result has a better flavour and texture than anything you’ll get in a bottle.

“The cuisine I create is nothing complex. I use seasonal, fresh ingredients. People don’t come to Tomi and expect something too fancy – the food is based on skilful preparation, not exotic ingredients,” he says.

Joe started his hospitality journey in his home city of Hong Kong, working in restaurants from the age of 14. He moved to Japan and learned the arts of Japanese cuisine in hotels, cafés, bars and restaurants before getting married and moving to Christchurch.

He started Tomi Japanese Restaurant here nearly 10 years ago with his wife and father-in-law. “My wife is Japanese, which is why we have a Japanese restaurant. My father-in-law is a chef with more than 40 or 50 years in the business, and he retired two years ago, so my wife and I are managing the whole place, still as a family restaurant.”

The secret to teriyaki perfection, Joe says, is mixing together equal parts of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Mirin is a sort of Japanese rice wine, kind of like sake but it’s sweeter and lower in alcohol.

“You have to cook the sauce until it becomes shiny. Teri means ‘shiny’ in Japanese,” Joe says. Once you’ve got your sauce, you can use it to finish off crispy fried chicken or tofu after draining the cooking oil from your frying pan.

tomi.co.nz