The Team

Chef Itaru Nagano started cooking at a Japanese restaurant in Madison to relearn the language after moving from Japan to the US at the age of nine. Hooked on the kitchen, he cooked his way through Los Angeles, New York and Phoenix before returning to Madison and enrolling at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, where he graduated with honors.

He went on to cook for James Beard Award winners José Andrés in Washington, DC and Tom Colicchio as sous chef at Craft in New York, then spent over six years at L’Etoile in Madison — five of them as Chef de Cuisine. His cooking is deliberately uncomplicated: great ingredients, handled precisely, allowed to shine.