Fumihiro Nakamura does not affect the expansive personality and well-studied bonhomie of a born restaurateur in the classic European mold. Nor does he in any way exude the slick professionalism and marketing savvy of the streetwise MBAs who scheme up and preside over flash designer eateries for cash-flush upwardly mobile entrepreneurs and their corporate camp followers.

Instead, he is a laid-back, mild-mannered man, deferential even, and one to whom the notion of self-aggrandizement seems totally alien. Yet after just four years on the Tokyo scene, he and business partner Masa Nagasaka are already presiding over an impressive stable of restaurants which many, the Tokyo Food File included, believe represent the best of cutting-edge Pacific Rim values.

First off the blocks, back in 1996, came the (approximately) eponymous Fummy's Grill, offering a West Coast take on down-home bistro-level cooking, which hit the mark immediately despite its less than accessible location behind Yebisu Garden Place. Next came the rather more upmarket Cardenas, round the corner on Meiji-dori in nether Hiroo, and soon thereafter its Oriental sister operation, Cardenas Chinois, set among the well-heeled dining alleys of Nishi-Azabu.