Todd English is the first to admit that being American and of Italian ancestry makes his family name exceedingly odd. He has no idea where it comes from, but supposes that one day he may try to find out. No chance of this happening in the near future, however. This is a man with more restaurants to open, a whole lot of cooking still to do.

He lopes across the lobby of the new Grand Hyatt hotel in Roppongi Hills, where his latest eatery, Olives, is housed, with a look of puzzlement. He's sorry, having imagined this to be a phone interview. No problem though, he insists with laid-back ease and heads for the hotel coffee shop, where (being tall and built like a American football player) he fills his chair, turns his cap back to front and sticks with the bottle of water from his room. Then he says I am all his. (I wish!)

Todd grew up between Atlanta and New York. "My father was a TV producer and director in the early days of PBS, so we were always moving around." His Calabrian grandmother and Italian-born mother kept things stable, with the kitchen off-limits to menfolk. "As a kid, I was always at their side, watching, chopping, stirring. Then at 16, 17, they shooed me away, saying I was too grown up."

He re-routed his enthusiasm by working part time in restaurants and bistros, "anywhere there was a kitchen, and people cooking." This was the 1970s, when there was little choice between upmarket French cuisine and local family steakhouses. At high school, a counselor noted Todd's interest in cooking and suggested he join the home economics class. "On the first day the teacher produced a box of cake mix. I'd never seen such a thing in my life -- at home we cooked from scratch. I walked out."

He decided to concentrate awhile on sports. "I loved soccer. Also baseball -- thinking games. Japanese baseball seems more like war."

Then came the bug to travel. Todd left for Europe with $500, a few words of Italian and a note from a German friend who knew someone who knew someone who worked in a restaurant in northern Italy. "I spent a year there, also in France, traveling around, learning about food with a backpack, guitar and a Euro Pass." This being 1984-ish, there were lots of Japanese there, studying. "The start of Japan's Italian boom, I guess."

In 1989 he opened his first restaurant, Olives, "carefully, in Boston, based on the economy taking a hit." A cross between a bistro and a trattoria, it was quite small, and it took him several years to get a full liquor license, but the style of home cooking blew the cool restrained Bostonians away.

It took another 10 years for him to branch out, to Las Vegas of all places. "Steven Wynn was opening the Hotel Bellagio and wanted a restaurant." That was Olives No. 2. Todd now has two Blue Fish restaurants, five Figs and six Olives. "I choose locations carefully -- Aspen, Washington D.C., New York, Tokyo." He also has a casino-based restaurant in Tuscany.

"I'm an entrepreneur," he states. "By this I mean I believe in hiring the right people and maintaining the vision. Of course, hard economics are involved; but you have to go with the flow, the upturns, downturns." This apparently makes him an interesting case study -- he gets invited to sit on discussion panels.

He first visited Tokyo in October last year. Having the Japanese chef and restaurateur Nobu as his partner in the enterprise helped smooth the way. "The homogeneity of the culture, the city's intensity and globalism, blew me away. I took one look and said, 'Where's the recession?' It's easy to forget that Japan is still the second-most-successful economy in the world, after the USA."

On this trip he is concerned with tweaking Olives here and there. "We've only been open a couple of months, so it's a learning curve." Designed by David Rockwell, the colorful interior is sun-drenched Mediterranean.

There are Italian dishes on the menu, but with as many layers to the food as there is imagination. Todd describes a Parmesan pudding with a sweet pea sauce. Figs, prosciutto and Gorgonzola cheese with a flat bread. And roast chicken with garlic cooked in a dark broth stock with mushrooms, and fresh mint. "I like to take common ingredients and cook them in uncommon ways. I'm not fussy, though. All I'm doing here is making the food a little more stylized, with an even greater awareness of presentation."

Creating dishes is a balancing act that satisfies all the senses. "First you look, then comes the aroma, finally you eat, and that is the surprise! On the lips, in the mouth, the alchemy happens." Nor should the experience be hurried. Eating is about cooking, and the people who come to eat. "Italians cook their tails off; they cook with love." There's nothing like a long slow lazy meal with family and/or friends. The act of cooking is a spiritual experience -- a ritual gifting, if you like."

Todd relaxes by cooking weekends for his three kids who live with their mother. "I like to cook theme meals, like I was just in Atlanta, so made fried chicken, beans and corn bread. They went nuts."

Asked what is left in terms of challenge, he says he will continue to grow, handing over projects to those who have his most faithful supporters over the years. Also he has a TV show starting at the end of August, on PBS, naturally, since the world always turns just so. "Called 'Open Kitchen,' it will follow the progress of one ingredient -- showing how paint gets onto canvas, so to speak.

"I'm brilliantly busy," he admits, grinning from ear to ear.