Restaurateur and chef Yoshiyuki Gi has spent a lifetime working in Chinese restaurants. He grew up in the kitchen of his parent's eatery in Yokohama's Chinatown before working his way through Chinese restaurants in Japan and onto China. When he returned to Japan, he settled in Kyoto and opened upscale restaurant Ichi no Hunairi in a former tea house overlooking the Kamo River.
In 2010, Gi changed tactics — slightly — opening Gi Han Ebisu Do on Sanjo shopping street, a short walk west of downtown Kyoto, as well as a sister restaurant in neighboring Osaka. The focus at both of these restaurants is casual Chinese food, with a focus on dim sum, but the menu is rounded out with a mix of classic Japanese-inspired Chinese offerings including gyōza (pan-fried dumplings) and yakisoba (fried noodles).
At the Sanjo branch during lunch and dinner there's often a line of people outside the restaurant, obscuring a window that provides a view of the kitchen and the cooks inside rolling out paper-thin skin for the dumplings. Gi's dumplings are the result of his Yokohama upbringing and training in Shanghai. When each serving arrives, the lid is promptly removed and as the steam clears away the petit dumplings shiver inside their nearly translucent skins.
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