Our Story

With over 30 years of experience Chef Yukinari Yamamoto arrived in Los Angeles with a goal in mind, to open restaurants that offer customers real authentic Japanese food at reasonable prices.

 

Coming from a humble beginning Chef Yamamoto entered the Japanese restaurant business in 1988 in Tochigi prefecture Japan. He started like many aspiring Chef’s do, by cleaning and washing dishes. Sushi is considered a form of art in Japan. Some aspiring sushi chef train for over three years to even be allowed to prepare the shari (seasoned rice), and many more years before they have a hand in preparing the seafood. A young Yukinari understood this and immersed himself to his craft. Through hard work and dedication not only did Chef Yamamoto achieve his goal at an unprecedented speed but within 3 years became the store’s manager.

 

Throughout the years he used that same work ethic to climb the ranks to eventually be promoted to his companies headquarters where he was in charge of overseeing marketing strategies and sales for over 200 stores. As time passed he expanded his knowledge of the restaurant business opening and managing restaurants for his company in locations like Hawaii, Seattle and Los Angeles. The desire to open up his own signature restaurant had been growing and in June 2018 he opened TOTOYAMA SUSHI & RAMEN located in the heart of Hollywood across from the W Hotel.

 

Two years later Chef Yukinari Yamamoto presents his second restaurant, KINARI SUSHI & NOODLE. His vision is to share his art and passion of Japanese cuisine by offeing customers authentic Japanese food at reasonable prices.